A Cold Heat Transfer Tunnel for Gas Turbine Research on an Annular Cascade

The Oxford University Blowdown Tunnel has been substantially modified to test a large annular cascade of high pressure nozzle guide vanes (mean blade diameter of 1.11 m and axial chord of 0.0673 m). The new transonic facility has been constructed to obtain complete contours of heat transfer coefficient for both the end walls and blade surfaces using the transient liquid crystal technique, to measure pressure distributions and losses, and to study fundamental aspects of boundary layers and secondary flows. The facility allows an independent variation of Reynolds and Mach numbers, providing aerodynamic and heat transfer measurements in the region of interest for gas turbine design. The mass flow rate through the cascade at NGV design conditions (exit Mach number 0.96 and Reynolds number 2.0 × 106) is 38 kg/s and the pressure-regulated test duration exceeds 7 seconds.

Suppression of Mixed-Flow Pump Instability and Surge by the Active Alteration of Impeller Secondary Flows

An active method for enhancing pump stability, featuring water jet injection at impeller inlet, was applied to a mixed-flow pump. The stall margin, between the design point and the positive slope region of the head-flow characteristic, was most effectively enlarged by injecting the jet in the counter-rotating direction of the impeller. The counter-rotating streamwise vorticity along the casing, generated by the velocity discontinuity due to the jet injection, altered the secondary flow pattern in the impeller by opposing the passage vortex and assisting the tip leakage vortex motion. The location of the wake flow was displaced away from the casing-suction surface corner of the impeller, thus avoiding the onset of the extensive corner separation, the cause of positive slope region of the head-flow characteristic. This method was also confirmed to be effective for stabilizing a pump system already in a state of surge.

Spanwise Transport in Axial-Flow Turbines: Part 2 — Throughflow Calculations Including Spanwise Transport

In Part 1 of this paper, a repeating stage condition was shown to occur in two low aspect ratio turbines, after typically two stages. Both turbulent diffusion and convective mechanisms were responsible for spanwise transport. In this part, two scaling expressions are determined that account for the influence of these mechanisms in effecting spanwise transport. These are incorporated into a throughflow model using a diffusive term. The inclusion of spanwise transport allows the use of more realistic loss distributions by the designer as input to the throughflow model and therefore focuses attention on areas where losses are generated. In addition, modelling of spanwise transport is shown to be crucial in predicting the attenuation of a temperature profile through a turbine.

Tip Leakage Flow in Linear Compressor Cascade

Tip leakage flow in a linear compressor cascade of NACA 65-1810 profiles is investigated, for tip clearance levels of 1.0, 2.0 and 3.25 percent of chord at design and off-design flow conditions. Data, velocity and pressures, are collected from three transverse sections inside tip clearance and sixteen sections within flow passage. Tip separation vortex influence is identified from the data. Leakage flow mixing is clearly present inside the clearance and has a significant influence on the internal loss.

Correlation Between Microstructure and Mechanical Properties of Diffusion Brazed MAR-M 247

Diffusion brazing is a joining process utilized in the manufacture and repair of turbine blades and vanes. MAR-M247 is an investment cast Ni-based superalloy used for turbine blading and has good strength properties at high temperatures. The objectives of this work was to develop a diffusion brazing procedure to achieve high strength joints. A commercially available diffusion brazing filler metal of composition Ni-15Cr-3,5B of 100 μm thickness was used. With the desire to eliminate brittle centre-line phases, the effects of the processing variables (only temperature and time) on the joint microstructure was studied. Once the metallurgy of the joint was understood, mechanical property assessments were undertaken i.e. tensile and creep rupture tests, and the latter being the severest test to evaluate joint strength. The results demonstrated that the diffusion brazed joints had nearly equivalent mechanical strength to that of the parent metal. This showed that the resultant diffusion brazing parameters enabled effective and reliable joining of MAR-M247.

Magnetic Bearing Control of Flexible Shaft Vibrations Based on Multiaccess Velocity-Displacement Feedback

A model of the forced vibrations of a flexible, asymmetric and unbalanced shaft, supported by two magnetic bearings is derived to simulate the effect of different schemes of active control on shaft dynamic behaviour. Simulation results were compared for several cases of single and multi-access bearing controls, rigid-body-mode only and rigid with flexible mode control, and linear and non-linear bearing responses. It is shown that the multi-access bearing response calculated from the known equation of the stable ROCL (Reduced Order Closed Loop) and based on the direct velocity-displacement feedback, provided the most precise shift in critical frequencies and also reasonable suppression of shaft vibration amplitudes. The non-linear bearing design was also briefly discussed. The stability analysis showed that stability limits were influenced by more parameters in this case, but no particular advantages were observed in suppression of the vibration amplitudes as compared to the linear case.

S1A-02 STIG Gas Turbine Test Rig

This paper presents a brief account of the first Chinese experimental plant of a steam-injected gas turbine and its various systems. Also given in the paper are its main design features and test results.

A Study of the Feasibility of Steam-Augmented Gas Turbines for Surface Ships

The steam-augmented gas turbine (SAGT) has attracted attention because of its increased fuel efficiency. It yields significant, cost-effective increments of output power, particularly when steam/water injection is increased to levels approaching 50% of air flow. Such high levels of steam/water consumption permit burner operation near stoichiometric combustion ratios with specific powers exceeding 580 hp-sec/lb anticipated. This paper examines steam-augmented gas turbines for their applicability in Navy DDG-class ship environments. SAGT engine concepts exhibit efficiencies approaching the Navy’s intercooled regenerative (ICR) engine, and an impressive compactness that arises from the high specific power of steam. Polished water consumption may be 425,000 gal/day for a 100,000-hp SAGT-engine ship plant. Nevertheless, SAGT engine systems impose little if any negative ship impact even after accounting for water purification systems. Moreover, because of their high specific power, SAGT systems are as affordable, on a first-acquisition-cost basis, as the current gas turbine systems in the fleet, and in the present supply pipeline.

Mathematical Modelling of an Annular Gas Turbine Combustor

Mathematical model for description of axisymmetric swirled flow with diffusion combustion is based on numerical solution of Reynolds equation with k-W modell of turbulence. The results of numerical and experimental investigations of local and general characteristicse of flow, heat and mass transfer, combustion and NOx formation in annular combustor with opposite swirled air jets are presented. Satisfactory agreement between calculations and experiments is obtained. The dependences of combustor characteristics vs geometric and operational parameters are generalized.

A Probabilistic Analysis of Single-Degree-of-Freedom Blade Vibration

The effects of random stiffness and damping variations on damped natural frequencies and response levels of turbomachinery blades are investigated by employing probabilistic approach using a single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) model. An important feature of this study is the determination of the cumulative probability distributions for damped natural frequencies and receptance frequency response functions without having to compute their probability density distributions since it is shown that those of stiffness and damping can be used directly. The advantage of this approach is not only in the simplicity of problem formulation but also in the substantial reduction of computational requirements. Furthermore, results suggest that both stiffness and damping properties should be considered as random parameters in statistical analyses of forced response.