Gas Turbine Hot Section Patents: Leaders & White Space 2026
- Filing has cooled since a 2017 peak of 10 families a year, with the 2022 midpoint back at that same level — the claim space around combustor liner cooling and coatings looks saturated rather than growing.
- F23R combustion-chamber and F02C gas-turbine-plant codes cover the large majority of records, while alloy-composition filings under C22C sit at a fraction of that volume — a narrower, less crowded lane for new claims.
- The most-cited prior art dates back to the 2000s, including combustor liner cooling and CMC-on-insulation composite structure patents that still anchor freedom-to-operate analysis today.
What this landscape covers
Gas turbine hot section components sit at the intersection of thermal management, materials science and mechanical design: combustor liners, transition pieces, cooling hole geometries, thermal barrier coatings and the single crystal alloys that carry creep loads at combustion temperatures. This landscape draws on 212 patent families filed or published between 2015 and mid-2026, indexed against IPC classes covering combustion chambers, gas turbine plants, turbines, metalworking, furnace linings, welding and alloys. Publication lags filing by roughly eighteen months, so the most recent filing years understate real activity.
The dataset is built around claim language on thermal barrier coatings, creep life, oxidation resistance, single crystal alloys and cooling holes — the specific technical levers used to keep hot section metal below its melting point while running combustion gas past it at ever-higher inlet temperatures.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 212-family dataset: how filing volume has moved year over year, and how that volume splits across the IPC subclasses that define the hot section claim space.
A flat-to-declining filing curve
Filings peaked at 10 families in 2017 and the 2022 midpoint sits at the same level of 10, with no sustained climb in between. That pattern reads as a mature, well-occupied claim space rather than an emerging one — new entrants are more likely to compete for narrow improvements than open ground.
Combustion and plant codes dominate
F23R (combustion chambers) and F02C (gas-turbine plants) appear in 185 and 175 of the 212 records respectively, meaning most filings touch both codes at once — liner and cooling-hole claims tied directly to the surrounding plant architecture. F01D (turbines), B23P (metalworking) and the coating-and-alloy codes (C23C, C22C) trail well behind, marking where claim density thins out.
Shares are the percentage of the 212 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Gas Turbine Hot Section Components with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about gas turbine hot section components and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe prior art anchoring this space
Thick coated combustor liner
A combustor liner built from panels joined at a cooling nugget with a bridge and lip forming a slot outlet. Thermal barrier coating covers the inboard panel and lip surfaces at a nominal thickness, with the lip's distal end at the slot outlet positioned close to the coating aft of the slot — a geometry aimed at controlling coating thickness precisely where cooling air exits.Filed by General Electric Company, published 2005-03-10 as US20050050896A1.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US7010921B2 | Method and apparatus for cooling combustor liner and transition piece of a gas turbine | 230 |
| 2 | US6098397A | Combustor for a low-emissions gas turbine engine | 160 |
| 3 | US20050076504A1 | Composite structure formed by CMC-on-insulation process | 128 |
| 4 | US7093359B2 | Composite structure formed by CMC-on-insulation process | 121 |
| 5 | US6513331B1 | Preferential multihole combustor liner | 97 |
| 6 | US6655149B2 | Preferential multihole combustor liner | 91 |
| 7 | US7493767B2 | Method and apparatus for cooling combustor liner and transition piece of a gas turbine | 75 |
| 8 | US6205789B1 | Multi-hole film cooled combuster liner | 75 |
| 9 | US6761031B2 | Double wall combustor liner segment with enhanced cooling | 74 |
| 10 | US5737922A | Convectively cooled liner for a combustor | 64 |
Citation counts accumulate over time inside this corpus, so older combustor liner and coating patents lead the table — treat the ranking as a signal of influence on later filings, not of current commercial relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
Put your own technology through the same analysis
Eureka on the web
When you want the answer in the next five minutes.
The agent works the prompt against patents and technical literature, citing every source.
Run your analysis now →MCP server & REST API
When it has to run inside your own pipeline.
Patent search, landscape analysis and assignee resolution as MCP tools. Drop them into any agent framework, or call REST directly.
Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for a filing strategy
Read together, the trend line, the IPC split and the citation table point to a technology that has already been heavily claimed at the system level, with narrower room left in materials and process detail.
Growth has stalled, not accelerated
The peak year for filings was 2017, and the 2022 midpoint returned to that same volume rather than exceeding it. Combined with the eighteen-month publication lag, this points to a claim space where the core architecture is settled and incremental refinement is the more realistic path for new filings.
Combustion-chamber claims dominate the corpus
Nearly the entire dataset sits inside F23R and F02C, the codes covering combustion chambers and gas-turbine plants. Turbines (F01D), metalworking (B23P) and alloy composition (C22C) are present but far thinner, which is where a narrower, better-defined claim is more likely to clear prior art.
2000s-era cooling and CMC patents still set the baseline
The most-cited records in this corpus, including combustor liner cooling and CMC-on-insulation composite structure patents, were published in the 2000s. Any new filing on liner cooling geometry or ceramic matrix composite integration should expect examiners to cite this earlier art directly.
US and European offices carry the bulk of activity
The United States leads receiving offices with 81 filings, followed by the EPO at 55 and Japan at 24, with Canada, Singapore and South Korea trailing. A freedom-to-operate check for hot section components should prioritise US and European searches first.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to gas turbine hot section components, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the gate sits
Recent-year momentum across the tracked assignees has flattened to zero across the board in the latest year, consistent with the overall filing slowdown rather than any single company pulling back. That makes the co-assignee record and the sub-areas still open to a first mover more informative than a simple leaderboard.
Filing here is mostly solo, not joint
Only two co-assignee pairs appear across the dataset, both centred on Toshiba entities filing jointly with Toshiba Energy Systems and Toshiba Engineering. Most other activity in this space is filed by a single assignee rather than through joint ventures or cross-licensed development programmes.
No assignee is currently accelerating
General Electric, United Technologies, Toshiba, IHI, Toshiba Energy Systems and Hitachi all show zero filings in the latest tracked year. Given the publication lag, this likely reflects reporting delay rather than a genuine stop, but it means recent competitive positioning cannot yet be read from this data.
Legacy assignees still anchor the prior art
The most-cited patents in the corpus concentrate on combustor liner cooling and CMC-on-insulation composite structures, filed well before the 2015-2026 window opens. Any competitive analysis needs to trace forward from these anchor patents to see which later filings design around them versus build directly on them.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| General Electric Company | 0 | — |
| United Technologies Corporation | 0 | — |
| Toshiba Corporation | 0 | — |
| Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries Co., Ltd. (IHI) | 0 | — |
| Toshiba Energy Systems & Solutions Corporation | 0 | — |
| Hitachi, Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Pratt & Whitney Canada Corp. | 0 | — |
| Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to a mature core and a thinner set of adjacent branches. The next steps depend on whether the goal is defensive clearance or an offensive filing position.
Run a freedom-to-operate check on liner cooling geometry
Given how heavily cited the earlier combustor liner cooling patents remain, any new cooling hole or panel design should be checked against that lineage before drafting claims.
Explore prior art with EurekaScope alloy and coating claims separately from plant-level claims
C22C alloy and C23C coating codes carry far fewer filings than the combustion-chamber codes, suggesting materials-level claims face a less crowded field than system-level architecture claims.
Map the white space in EurekaCommon questions on this landscape
The most-cited records in this dataset are combustor liner cooling and CMC-on-insulation composite structure patents dating from the 2000s, with one liner cooling patent alone cited 230 times within this corpus. These older filings act as anchor prior art that later applicants must design around or build on. Current-generation assignees tracked in this landscape include General Electric, United Technologies, Toshiba, IHI, Toshiba Energy Systems and Hitachi, though recent-year filing momentum across all of them has flattened to zero, partly reflecting publication lag rather than an actual stop in activity.
No, filing activity looks flat to declining rather than growing. The peak year so far was 2017 at 10 families, and the 2022 midpoint returned to that same level of 10 rather than exceeding it. Combined with the roughly eighteen-month lag between filing and publication, the most recent years in the dataset are understated, but the overall shape points to a claim space that has already been substantially occupied.
Within the IPC composition, alloy claims under C22C and coating-process claims under C23C carry far fewer records than the combustion-chamber code F23R or the gas-turbine-plant code F02C, which together touch most of the 212 families in this dataset. Single crystal alloy creep-life claims, oxidation-resistant bond coat processes and cooling hole geometry specific to CMC liners are narrower branches worth checking for open claim space before assuming the whole hot section field is saturated.
US20050050896A1, assigned to General Electric and published in 2005, claims a combustor liner built from panels joined at a cooling nugget with a bridge and lip forming a slot outlet, with thermal barrier coating applied at a controlled nominal thickness up to the lip's distal end near the slot outlet. It is a geometry-and-coating-thickness claim rather than a claim over combustor liners generally, so it constrains designs that place coating right up to a similarly positioned slot outlet but leaves room for liner architectures that route cooling air or apply coating differently at that boundary. Anyone designing a new liner cooling nugget should check this claim's specific geometric limitations rather than assume it blocks liner cooling as a category.
The dataset shows only two identified co-assignee pairs, both involving Toshiba entities filing jointly, which indicates most patents here are filed by a single assignee rather than through joint development. Citation weight concentrates on a handful of older records tied to combustor liner cooling and CMC composite structures. Beyond those anchor patents, filing activity across the tracked assignees is fairly even in recent years, with none showing distinct acceleration in the latest tracked period.
Research Gas Turbine Hot Section Components in depth with Eureka
Go past this page: query the whole gas turbine hot section components corpus yourself, in your own scope.
Every answer comes back with patent numbers you can open.
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.