Numerical simulation and prototype testing of gas turbine with hot spinning process

Abstract

The gas turbine is normally operating in high temperature environment and its blades / rotor are constantly contacting gas with extremely high temperature. To prolong the life cycle and improve the function of these critical turbine components, the cooling methods should be applied to reduce the temperature in turbine disc area. But the potential problem is that the cooling methodology reducing the central rotor temperature can enlarge the temperature gradients leading excessive thermal stresses in gas turbine components including turbine wheel. One computational simulation model is introduced in this paper to describe the mechanism of mechanical and thermal stresses produced in gas turbine to illustrate the influence of some important parameters on this gas turbine function and help to optimize the turbine wheel design. Since there are few related numerical analytic simulations that have been done in this research field, this paper intends to provide the numerical simulation methodology to investigate and understand the stress mechanism in gas turbine operation. The turbine model has also been prototyped and tested to compare the numerical simulation results. All these studies can help to optimize future gas turbine design and improve the performance.