Additive Repair of Aero Engine Components Patents: Leaders & Gaps 2026
- One filer dominates. The leader holds 8 of the 19 records in scope, and the top 5 combined account for 73.7% of all records — this field is concentrated, not fragmented.
- Filing only recently accelerated. Activity was near zero through 2017 and peaked at 10 records in 2025, so most of the documented art is very recent and the true 2026 count is still understated by publication lag.
- Powder metallurgy dominates the claim mix. B22F appears in 57.9% of the 19 records, well ahead of additive manufacturing (B33Y, 36.8%) and welding/brazing (B23K, 31.6%) classes.
Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 19 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
This landscape tracks patent activity at the intersection of additive repair and directed energy deposition repair for aero engine and related rotating-equipment components, filtered further to records touching powder feed control, geometry-adaptive toolpaths, residual stress management, microstructure matching, qualification pathways or cost comparison. The scope is narrow by design: it isolates repair-specific claims from the much larger general additive-manufacturing literature, which is why the total record count is small relative to broader 3D-printing searches.
Nineteen published records sit inside this scope, spanning receiving offices in China, the United States, Europe and India. The dataset is young — filing was essentially flat until the last few years — so the picture below should be read as an early-stage map of a field still forming its claim structure, not a mature, saturated one.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 19 records: when the filings landed, and which IPC subclasses they carry. Because a single record can span several classes, the technology shares add up to more than 100% of the record total.
Filing trend, 2017-2026
Filings were at zero in 2017 and stayed thin for years before climbing to a peak of 10 records in 2025. The 2026 figure (1 so far) is a partial year and will understate final activity once publication catches up, roughly an 18-month lag from filing to publication.
Technology composition by IPC subclass
Powder metallurgy (B22F) is the largest single class at 57.9% of the 19 records, followed by metal working (B23P) and additive manufacturing (B33Y) tied at 36.8%, then welding, soldering and brazing (B23K) at 31.6%. Coating/surface deposition (C23C) and turbines (F01D) sit lower, each at 21.1%, marking narrower but still active claim areas.
Shares are the percentage of the 19 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Additive Repair of Aero Engine Components with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about additive repair of aero engine components and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaMost-cited and representative filings
Surface preparation to reduce heat affected zone cracking during directed energy deposition repair of cast components (US20250242452A1)
The filing covers a weld-repair method for cast components that identifies a repair zone, performs a surface preparation step to impart a pre-selected level of compressive residual stress before deposition, and then runs the directed energy deposition repair operation without forming microcracks in the heat-affected zone.Filed by RTX Corporation, published 2025-07-31 — among the most recent filings in scope.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US10442002B2 | Manufacturing of components of a vehicle using additive layer manufacturing | 115 |
| 2 | US20160136891A1 | Manufacturing of components of a vehicle using additive layer manufacturing | 13 |
| 3 | CN117773144A | 一种异质材料激光修复形性协同调控工艺方法 | 2 |
| 4 | US20250242410A1 | Engineered microstructure for enhanced performance during directed energy deposition repair process | 1 |
Citation counts favour older records simply because they have had more time to accumulate citations inside the searched corpus; treat them as a signal of influence, not of current technical importance.
Patent titles are shown in the language they were filed in, not translated, so that each record stays verifiable against the original filing — a translated title will not match in Eureka or in any national register. Publication numbers are shown where the record carries one (4 of 4 rows); clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Three read-throughs from the concentration, timing and technology figures above.
The field has a clear leader, not a crowded middle
With the leader alone holding 8 of 19 records and the top 5 combined covering 73.7% of all records in scope, a new entrant is not competing against a diffuse field — it is competing against a small number of assignees who already hold most of the documented claim space.
This is a young, fast-forming corpus
Filing sat near zero for years before jumping to a peak of 10 records in 2025. That compressed timeline means the claim boundaries in this space are still being drawn, and the 2026 count will rise as publication lag clears.
Powder handling, not deposition geometry, is the busiest claim area
B22F (powder metallurgy) covers 57.9% of the 19 records, ahead of B33Y additive manufacturing and B23K welding/brazing. Filers are clustering around powder-side process control more than toolpath or geometry claims, which is where density is lower.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to additive repair of aero engine components, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the field is still open
The ranking below covers all 20 companies the data endpoint returns for this scope — it is the full ranked list, not a top-50 or top-100 cut.
One assignee holds close to half the field
The leading assignee accounts for 8 of the 19 records in scope, the largest single share by a wide margin over the rest of the ranked list.
Coverage closes fast after the top 10
The top 10 ranked assignees combined already account for 100.0% of all 19 records in scope, meaning every record in this dataset is attributable to one of ten organisations — there is no long tail beyond that point.
Recent activity has shifted toward a newer name
Several of the historically active assignees show zero filings in the latest year, some down from prior activity, while a newer filer registers the field's only latest-year record — an early signal worth tracking rather than a settled trend.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| SUDIPTA SWAIN | 1 | — |
| RTX Corporation | 0 | -100% |
| Airbus Operations GmbH | 0 | — |
| Harbin Institute of Technology at Weihai | 0 | -100% |
| Zhengzhou University of Aeronautics | 0 | -100% |
| State-owned Wuhu Machinery Factory | 0 | — |
| CRRC Yongji Electric Machinery Co., Ltd. | 0 | -100% |
| CRRC Datong Electric Locomotive Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The figures above establish the shape of the field. The next step is usually a claim-level read of the leader's portfolio and a check of where your own process falls relative to the busiest IPC classes.
Map your process against the leader's claims
With one assignee holding 8 of 19 records, a freedom-to-operate check against that portfolio specifically — not the field average — is the highest-value next step for anyone building a directed energy deposition repair process.
Explore claims in EurekaTrack the under-claimed branches
Geometry-adaptive toolpath and qualification pathway claims sit at lower density than powder-side process control. Watching filings in these sub-areas over the next few publication cycles will show whether they stay open.
Set up monitoring in EurekaCommon questions about this landscape
One assignee leads the ranked list with 8 of the 19 records in this scope, well ahead of the rest of the field. The top 5 assignees combined account for 73.7% of all 19 records, and the top 10 combined cover 100.0% of the dataset. This means the entire documented field maps to just ten organisations, with no long tail beyond that point.
The trend shows filings near zero as far back as 2017, rising to a peak of 10 records in 2025. A formal growth rate is not calculable here because fewer than four complete years of data remain once the roughly 18-month publication lag is factored in, so the 2026 figure of 1 record should be read as partial, not as a slowdown.
The most common IPC subclass is B22F, powder metallurgy, appearing in 57.9% of the 19 records in scope. B23P (metal working) and B33Y (additive manufacturing) each cover 36.8% of records, B23K (welding, soldering and brazing) covers 31.6%, and coating/surface deposition (C23C) and turbines (F01D) each cover 21.1%. Because a record can carry more than one class, these shares add up to more than 100% of the record total.
US20250242452A1, filed by RTX Corporation and published 2025-07-31, covers a weld-repair method for cast components that performs a surface preparation step to impart a pre-selected level of compressive residual stress in the repair zone before running the directed energy deposition operation, specifically to avoid microcracking in the heat-affected zone. The claim scope centres on the surface-preparation-before-deposition sequence rather than the deposition process itself. Anyone repairing cast components with directed energy deposition should check their surface-prep step against this sequence specifically.
Based on the technology composition figures, geometry-adaptive toolpath planning, microstructure matching for dissimilar-alloy repairs, qualification pathway documentation and cost-comparison modelling for repair-versus-replace decisions all sit at lower filing density than the dominant powder metallurgy and additive manufacturing classes. Coating and surface deposition claims involving residual stress control (C23C, 21.1% of records) are also less crowded than the powder-handling classes. These are not guarantees of an open field, but they are areas where the claim space is less occupied than the average for this dataset.
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.