Turbine Blade Repair Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- 77.6% concentration. The top five assignees account for 38 of the 49 records in scope, leaving a thin tail below them.
- Metal working and turbine classes dominate. B23P and F01D each appear on roughly six in ten records, while welding-specific B23K sits at 40.8%.
- Filing has not built a clean multi-year trend. Activity peaked at 7 records in 2022; with fewer than four complete post-lag years, no growth rate can be stated.
Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 49 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
This landscape tracks patent activity at the intersection of turbine blade repair and blade tip welding, filtered to records that also address laser cladding, single crystal weldability, heat affected zone control, dimensional restoration, repair limit determination, or post weld heat treatment. The scope is deliberately narrow: it is not general turbine manufacturing, but the specific problem of restoring a damaged blade to service without compromising the base alloy’s microstructure.
49 published records make up the dataset, spanning filings from 2015 through the 2026 cut-off. Publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so the most recent one or two years understate real activity and should be read as provisional rather than a decline.
Filing trend and technical composition
Two views of the same 49 records: how filings have moved year on year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claims.
Filing trend
Filings show no clean multi-year climb. The peak so far is 7 records in 2022, with 2017 and the 2026 partial year both at zero; the gap between complete years is too irregular to support a stated growth rate.
Technology composition by IPC subclass
B23P (metal working) and F01D (turbines) each cover close to six in ten of the 49 records, confirming that most filings frame the invention as a mechanical restoration process applied to a turbine part. B23K (welding, soldering and brazing) sits at 40.8%, meaningfully behind the two lead classes despite welding being central to the search scope, and C22C (alloys) trails further at 18.4%. Because records can carry multiple classes, these shares sum to more than 100% of the 49 records.
Shares are the percentage of the 49 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Turbine Blade Repair and Welding with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about turbine blade repair and welding and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaMost-cited records in this dataset
US11225868B1 — Method for integral turbine blade repair
Filed by Stresswave and granted January 2022, this record describes an indenter-based method for plastically straining a weld nugget and its heat-affected zone so that subsequent heat treatment recrystallizes the region into a grain structure metallurgically comparable to the parent metal. The approach targets integrally bladed rotors, where conventional weld repair risks leaving a heat-affected zone that never matches the surrounding microstructure.Abstract condensed from the original filing.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20050194363A1 | Multi-laser beam welding high strength superalloys | 64 |
| 2 | US6972390B2 | Multi-laser beam welding high strength superalloys | 63 |
| 3 | US6673169B1 | Method and apparatus for repairing superalloy components | 46 |
| 4 | US20130115091A1 | Splice insert repair for superalloy turbine blades | 28 |
| 5 | JP1992032546A | Method for repairing moving blade of gas turbine | 23 |
| 6 | EP0389913A1 | Turbine blade repair | 22 |
| 7 | US20050126664A1 | Method and apparatus for repairing superalloy components | 18 |
| 8 | WO2013066680A1 | Splice insert repair for superalloy turbine blades | 14 |
| 9 | US20150093284A1 | Welding material for welding of superalloys | 11 |
| 10 | US20060138093A1 | Method and apparatus for repairing superalloy components | 9 |
Citation counts favour older filings simply because they have had more time to accumulate citations inside this corpus; treat the ranking as a signal of influence on later filers, not of current commercial relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Three patterns stand out once family counts, geography and citation data are read together.
Claim space sits with a small group
The leader holds 10 records and fifth place holds 3, with the top five together accounting for 38 of the 49 records in scope. A new entrant is filing into ground the leaders have already staked out on core repair and welding methods, not into an open field.
Filing is US-anchored with a strong European tail
The United States leads as receiving office with 15 records, followed by the EPO at 9 and the United Kingdom at 8. Japan and Canada each sit at 3, and WIPO/PCT filings number 4 — a route more suited to holding options open than to a single dominant home jurisdiction.
Older superalloy welding filings still anchor the field
The most-cited records date to the mid-2000s and concern multi-laser beam welding of high-strength superalloys and superalloy component repair generally. Their citation counts reflect years of accumulation inside a searched corpus, not current filing activity — newer entrants should read them as foundational prior art to design around, not as competitors to watch.
Most claims are framed as process, not metallurgy
Welding-specific claims (B23K) trail general metal-working framing (B23P) by a wide margin, and alloy composition claims (C22C, 18.4%) trail both. That gap suggests applicants are more often protecting the repair process sequence than the metallurgical chemistry itself.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to turbine blade repair and welding, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who holds the field, and where the gate sits
20 companies make up the entire ranked list this dataset returns. The distribution is steep at the top and thin below tenth place.
A single assignee holds the largest single share
The top-ranked assignee holds 10 of the 49 records, roughly one in five, and anchors much of the co-assignee activity visible in the inventor pairings within the dataset.
The drop-off starts quickly after the leaders
Fifth place holds 3 records, already a third of the leader's count, and the ranking compresses further from there — tenth place holds just 1. Competitive pressure is concentrated in a narrow band at the top rather than spread evenly.
Almost no activity sits outside the top ten
The top 10 assignees together account for 47 of the 49 records in scope. Only 2 records belong to entities outside that group, meaning a freedom-to-operate review can focus almost entirely on the ranked leaders rather than searching a broad unranked field.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Liburdi Engineering Ltd. | 0 | — |
| GKN Aerospace Sweden AB | 0 | -100% |
| Siemens Energy Inc. | 0 | — |
| TURBINE BLADING | 0 | — |
| Stresswave, Inc. | 0 | — |
| SHINN BRANDON W | 0 | — |
| BRUCK GERALD J | 0 | — |
| Honeywell International Inc. | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to a few concrete next steps depending on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate, whitespace filing, or competitor tracking.
Map the top 10 assignees' full portfolios
With 95.9% of records held by 10 companies, a targeted portfolio pull on each is more efficient than a broad field search.
Explore assignee portfolios in EurekaStress-test a claim against the most-cited prior art
The highest-citation records concern superalloy welding methods from the mid-2000s; any new filing on weld-based repair should be checked against them directly.
Run a claim comparison in EurekaValidate under-claimed branches before drafting
Low IPC representation in areas like powder-metallurgy restoration or automated post-weld inspection may reflect genuine white space or simply narrow search scope — worth confirming before committing claim language.
Check whitespace signals in EurekaCommon questions on turbine blade repair and welding patents
Within this 49-record dataset, one assignee leads with 10 records, roughly one-fifth of all filings in scope. The top five assignees together hold 38 records, or 77.6% of the total, so the field is concentrated rather than fragmented. Anyone assessing freedom-to-operate should prioritise a detailed review of that leading group before searching the smaller, long-tail filers.
The dataset centres on restoring damaged turbine blades through welding and related metalworking processes, with search terms spanning laser cladding, single crystal weldability, heat-affected zone control, dimensional restoration, repair-limit determination, and post-weld heat treatment. IPC data shows B23P (general metal working) and F01D (turbines) as the two most common classes, each appearing on roughly six in ten records, with welding-specific B23K present on 40.8%. Alloy composition claims under C22C are comparatively rare at 18.4%, suggesting most patents protect process sequence rather than metallurgical chemistry.
The trend data does not support a stated growth figure: filing activity peaked at 7 records in 2022 but does not show a consistent multi-year climb, and fewer than four complete years remain once the roughly 18-month publication lag is accounted for. The most recent filing years, including 2026, are necessarily understated because not all filings from those years have published yet. Readers should treat any apparent recent dip as a data artefact rather than a real slowdown until later publications catch up.
US11225868B1, assigned to Stresswave and granted in January 2022, claims an indenter-based method for plastically straining a weld nugget and its surrounding heat-affected zone so that later heat treatment produces a recrystallized grain structure comparable to the parent metal. It targets integrally bladed rotor repair specifically. It does not block welding-based repair generally, laser cladding approaches, or non-mechanical strain methods for heat-affected zone remediation, so alternative routes exist for teams working outside its specific indenter-and-strain-threshold approach.
The United States leads as receiving office with 15 records, followed by the European Patent Office at 9 and the United Kingdom at 8. WIPO/PCT filings number 4, while Japan and Canada each account for 3. This pattern indicates the US and Europe are the primary competitive jurisdictions for this technology, with PCT filings used to preserve optionality rather than as a dominant standalone route.
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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.