Patents by Inventor Nicholas Charles Palmer

Nicholas Charles Palmer has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Patent number: 7510376
    Abstract: A turbine blade includes a hollow airfoil having a plurality of bowed tip holes extending through a tip floor thereof and skewed toward a squealer rib extending outwardly from the floor.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 25, 2005
    Date of Patent: March 31, 2009
    Assignee: General Electric Company
    Inventors: Ching-Pang Lee, Nicholas Charles Palmer, Kevin Lee Kirkeng
  • Patent number: 7249934
    Abstract: A hollow turbine airfoil includes pressure and suction sidewalls extending in span between a root and tip and extending in chord between opposite leading and trailing edges. The pressure sidewall includes a first pattern of first holes distributed in span and chord over a majority thereof, and a second pattern of different second holes also distributed in span and chord over a minority of the pressure sidewall between the tip and the midspan of the airfoil.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 31, 2005
    Date of Patent: July 31, 2007
    Assignee: General Electric Company
    Inventors: Nicholas Charles Palmer, Kevin Lee Kirkeng, Ching-Pang Lee
  • Patent number: 7195454
    Abstract: A turbine airfoil includes opposite pressure and suction sides extending in span from a flowpath surface. The flowpath surface has chordally opposite forward and aft edges and laterally opposite first and second endfaces corresponding with the airfoil pressure and suction sides. The flowpath surface joins the first endface at the forward edge in a forward bullnose and joins the second endface at the aft edge in an aft bullnose, with the bullnoses varying in radius from the opposite edges.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 2, 2004
    Date of Patent: March 27, 2007
    Assignee: General Electric Company
    Inventors: Wenfeng Lu, Ching-Pang Lee, Nicholas Charles Palmer
  • Patent number: 7118342
    Abstract: A turbine blade includes an airfoil having pressure and suction sidewalls extending between leading and trailing edges and root and tip. The tip includes squealer ribs extending from a tip floor forming an open tip cavity. The rib along the pressure sidewall has a squared external corner, and a flute extends along the base of the rib at the tip floor.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 9, 2004
    Date of Patent: October 10, 2006
    Assignee: General Electric Company
    Inventors: Ching-Pang Lee, James Robert Bailey, Nicholas Charles Palmer, Wenfeng Lu
  • Patent number: 6367687
    Abstract: A method is provided for treating cooperating, juxtaposed substantially uncoated alloy substrate surfaces in preparation for brazing, for example an inner wall of the radially outer open end of a turbine engine blading member with the rim of an end plate or tip cap. The method includes treating at least one of the cooperating surfaces with a reducing gas comprising halogen gas for a time and at a temperature, for example 1-6 hours at 1650-1950° F., sufficient to remove any surface debris, for example oxides, and to deplete the alloy substrate surface of the total of elements selected from Al and Ti to a level of less than about 1 weight %. Depletion is to a depth in the surface which avoids intergranular attack of the substrate alloy surface. For example, the depth is no greater than about 0.0015″. Then the cooperating surfaces are brazed together.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 17, 2001
    Date of Patent: April 9, 2002
    Assignee: General Electric Company
    Inventors: Jim Dean Reeves, Gary Eugene Wheat, Nicholas Charles Palmer, Robert Eugene McCracken