Notre Dame's new research facility set to propel growth for university and South Bend

The opening of the off-campus laboratory in the technology park near downtown is widely seen as a milestone in Notre Dame’s growth as a research university and in the growth of South Bend’s high-tech economy.

“Our hope is that this makes South Bend a hub for turbomachinery and aerospace research,” said Joshua Cameron, the lab’s director. “It is a truly world-class, unique facility that we’ve built here.”

But what is turbomachinery? And what will researchers be doing in the new laboratory space?

In the most basic terms, turbomachinery uses spinning blades to push air or water. The Notre Dame lab will focus its research on a particular type of turbomachinery: gas-turbine engines.

A commercial aircraft engine is one example of a gas-turbine engine. Those cylinder-shaped engines attached to a jetliner’s wings have large blades that are visible at the front of the cylinder, where air is taken into the engine. Inside the cylinder are several more rows of different-sized blades that compress the air and push it through a combustion chamber, where the air is heated before spinning a turbine near the rear of the engine.

Gas-turbine engines also are used to turn generators in power plants, pump oil out of the ground and in many other situations where a lot of power is needed.