: In conjunction with our Aircraft-Engine Division which has turned out to be truly game changers and the first application is our composite fan blades.  This is our GE90 Composite Fan Blade.  This has a three dimensional aerodynamic shape, incredibly efficient and the benefit of this fan blade is its light weight and its durability.  And what we have been able to do is develop this technology for the, this is a 10 foot diameter fan in collaboration with out Aircraft-Engine Division and so what we really do is we have just a world beater technology here. And what I want to do is I want to talk about some of the processes we use to actually make this fan blade and then we will come back and we will look at another application which is going to go on our next generation engine which will ultimately go on to Boeing Dreamliner. So I will turn our attention over here.  This is where the process starts. This is a cutting table, this is an automated cutting table it’s under computer control.  What we do here is we generate all of the composite plies, these plies basically have some very intricate shapes. We use these shapes to basically stack, we basically make the finished product out of a series of 5 mil thick composite laminate structure. Once we get it made, I am going to turn your attention over here. Now we have two processes which we use, the first process is called a resin infusion system.  So this is a resin infusion molding system which we have got here.  This takes a resin, a polymeric resin in two which we have got here.  This takes a resin, a polymeric resin in two components in any combination and then basically it gets fed out of this head, this head is where the resin actually flows out of and it flows into the pot.  Once it flows into the pot and we fill the pot with resin, we now take it over to our autoclave.  And in our autoclave over here, this is a high temperature high pressure system here.  We have got a component which we basically have made here, this shows the kind of capability that you have got this is a vein.  And what we basically do is we lay up the ply, we infuse it and then we put it in the autoclave where it is basically heated to 300 degrees F at elevated pressure and the combination of pressure and temperature provides a very high quality part which we can then take and put in the engine.  Now what I would like to do now is turn our attention back over here and we will look at one of the other components which we are again very proud of.  And this is a component that goes on the GEnx engine, the GEnx engine is the engine which is going to go on the Dreamliner and the component we are talking about is right here.  This is the containment case right here and the containment case itself is what is used in a catastrophic event that you have a blade release that is as all completely contained within the engine.  Now the material system we use here is called a braded composite and this uses a triaxial braid and I will show you what this looks like.  The triaxial braid has a very distinctive pattern to adhering Boeing pattern and the benefit of this is that you have a tremendous impact capability.  So this is very, very good at absorbing energy particularly during one of this catastrophic blade out events.  And the advantage again of using composites is the tremendous weight reduction that we get.  So for example on this case right here typically that would be made of aluminum.  So today it is made out of this braided composite which saves us around 350 pounds per engine.  And lastly what I would like to basically point to is that with the success story that we have had over last 15 years of composites, we are now turning to where else in the engine. There are lots of other opportunities in the engine which we can basically start using the dense polymer composite which is going to give us further weight reductions and further fuel efficiency. 

Pete Finnigan: I am Pete Finnigan.  I have been working here at GE’s Global Research Center for the last 25 years.  I am the member of the Composite Laboratory here at Global Research and the things that we do here are unbelievable.  We have been able to leapfrog the competition and we have been able to do it provide world class products, we have been able to provide our aircraft engine division a clear differentiation over our competition.