Abstract: A high power and high torque density piezoelectric axial pump is developed using torsional actuator tube (stator) directly coupled to the rotor via two one way clutches. A cylindrical torsional actuator is comprised of a plurality of tubular piezoelectric ceramic segments poled along their length, aligned in alternate polarity and bonded together with intervening electrodes. When an alternating electric field is applied to the electrodes across adjacent segments to actuate the segments in their shear resonance mode, an end of the cylindrical actuator moves in a direction perpendicular to the length of the actuator in response to the applied electric field. This full cycle pump two sets of one way clutches positioned at the other end of the cylindrical actuator tube such that both ends of the tube move in opposite angular directions.

Abstract: A turbine blade having a root provided with a curvature in its transverse and longitudinal cross sections. The root is receivable within the groove in the outer periphery of an attachment piece and the surface portions defining the groove have curvatures slightly greater than those of the root. A compliant pad can be inserted in the groove between each side of the root, respectively, and the corresponding surface portion of the attachment piece. Initially, the root will have a single point of contact with the adjacent surface portion or the compliant pad; but as the blade rotates, this point of contact becomes a line or surface contact to cause loads to be more uniformly distributed between the root and adjacent surface portions.

Abstract: A gas turbine combustor of the catalytic reactor type has the catalytic element means formed of a crossflow honeycomb type in which the various series of flow passages extend in oblique relation to each other and to longitudinal axis of the combustor shell so that the combustion gas from different radial locations in a cross section upstream from the catalytic element means is shifted to other radial locations in passing downstream, to promote temperature uniformity of the gas in a radial direction throughout the cross section of the combustor.