SPR-ing Technology Leads High-Quality Development of Aero-Engine Industry through Innovative Breakthroughs

As a key technology required for rotor testing in the research and development of domestic aerospace engines and gas turbines, high-speed slip ring collectors involve multiple disciplines such as high-speed rotating machinery, electrical contact materials, electrical noise, friction and wear, heat exchange, and thermal balance. Due to high technical difficulty and small market demand, under the guidance of the market economy, few enterprises are willing to invest more human and material resources in in-depth technical research, resulting in domestic high-speed slip ring technology still lagging at the level of foreign countries in the 1950s and 1960s.

Against the backdrop of the Party and the country calling on the whole nation to solve core technologies that are "bottlenecks" and encouraging scientific and technological personnel to integrate their personal careers with national needs, since 2013, the SPR-ing Technology team, relying on over 20 years of slip ring technology research and development foundation, has invested self-raised funds to research high-speed slip ring collector technology. The goal is to solve the problem of China being "bottlenecked" in 60,000rpm high-speed slip ring collector technology. Through the establishment of an electrochemical precision additive laboratory, a 90,000rpm high-speed slip ring collector rotation laboratory, and a friction pair ratio laboratory, researches have been carried out on the geometric characteristics of electrical contact friction surfaces in small-sized high-speed motion, high-speed coupling technology, and electrical contact friction heating.

Through systematic basic research, the optimal geometric quantification accuracy of contact surface roughness has been explored, and the laws and suppression methods of high-frequency noise generated by friction at different rotational speeds have been mastered. The impact of vibration conduction and millimeter-level axial movement under high-speed rotation on slip ring transmission performance has been analyzed, and solutions for isolating vibration and releasing axial movement under high-speed motion have been mastered. The factors affecting the temperature rise at the working contact points of slip ring collectors under high rotational speeds have been identified. Through a large number of experiments, the technology and methods for rapid heat exchange for temperature balance of slip ring collectors have been mastered. Through research on precision integration and precision processing technology of slender shafts of conductive slip rings, and over 2,000 technical process verifications of metal and non-metal multi-layer hybrid forming technology, the core technology and preparation methods of oil-cooled circulating ultra-high-speed slip rings have been mastered, forming independently controllable invention patent technologies.

At present, SPR-ing Technology has achieved full localization of all components of high-speed slip ring collectors, and has formed high-speed slip ring collector products with 32 to 200 rings and 0-90,000rpm. The maximum working life reaches 200 million revolutions. During the test, the dynamic resistance value of each circuit is stable, with extremely high transmission accuracy and very stable performance, completely breaking the monopoly of foreign countries in high-speed slip ring collectors for aero-engine and gas turbine testing. It has been successfully applied many times in national key aerospace engine stress test research and development, gas turbine rotor component testing, high-speed centrifuges and other projects.

SPR-ing Technology's independently developed non-cooled products have become the first choice of users in the aviation and gas turbine industries and replaced the original telemetry systems due to their comprehensive performance such as no cooling, small size, multi-channel, high speed, and long life, further expanding the application space of high-speed slip ring collectors. Non-cooled high-speed slip ring technology is also the development direction of the next generation of high-speed slip ring collectors.