The turbomachinery laboratory — Notre Dame Power & Propulsion

2004 – TODAY

From a campus room to Ignition Park: The Notre Dame Turbomachinery Laboratory began on campus in 2004 with about ten people. On 25 June 2014 the university announced its move: a $36 million facility at Ignition Park, built with the City of South Bend, the State of Indiana, Great Lakes Capital and Indiana Michigan Power as partners — a research plant in the city's technology park, testing the compressors and turbines of jet engines at full scale. The move was completed at the end of January 2016; the doors opened 1 February 2016 and the ribbon was cut on 7 June 2016. The commissioned facility is 25,000 square feet with four test bays and motors of more than 12,000 horsepower; the laboratory's own timeline page calls the commissioned plant a "$50M" facility, against the $36 million of the 2014 announcement, and both figures stand as their sources give them — the announcement's project against the laboratory's account of the finished plant. A Center of Excellence agreement with Pratt & Whitney anchored the industry side; the first high-power component test ran in 2017.

The work, and the renaming: The laboratory's business is the machinery at the heart of propulsion — gas-turbine compressors and turbines tested under conditions a university campus could not hold — for the engine makers of the industry. In February 2022 it opened the Willis Carrier Centrifugal Compressor Technology Laboratory, with a Carrier Center of Excellence seated at the laboratory under a three-year collaboration. In 2025 the laboratory took the name it now carries, Notre Dame Power & Propulsion. The address closes the circle this section has been drawing: the city's largest single piece of new research machinery stands on Studebaker ground, in the park the city built on the cleared works, testing the descendants of the aviation industry that Bendix and Studebaker together once supplied from the same streets.

Sources:

1. University of Notre Dame News, 25 June 2014 — the $36 million Ignition Park facility announced; the partners (City of South Bend, State of Indiana, Great Lakes Capital, Indiana Michigan Power).
2. Notre Dame Power & Propulsion (Notre Dame Turbomachinery Laboratory), institutional record and timeline — the laboratory begun on campus in 2004; the move completed end of January 2016, doors 1 February 2016, ribbon 7 June 2016; 25,000 square feet, four test bays, motors over 12,000 horsepower; the commissioned facility called "$50M" on the laboratory's own timeline; the Pratt & Whitney Center of Excellence; the first high-power component test, 2017; the Willis Carrier Centrifugal Compressor Technology Laboratory (February 2022); the 2025 renaming.