Lubricant free high speed turbo-machineries are one of the emerging fields in the gas turbine technology. Foil bearings are the major contenders in the lubricant free bearings due to their ability to support significant loads at very high speeds. The paper deals with the various stages in the development of discrete and continuous bump foil bearings and testing of the same for designed speeds and loads. Development of bumps involves determination of bump geometry for the desired load capacity, design of special purpose dies for the fabrication of corrugated sheets, identification of suitable bump material and evolution of heat treatment process. Here Beryllium–Copper (Be-Cu) is used as a bump material because of its self-lubricating property and good mechanical strength. The clearance between the shaft and top foil can be adjusted by providing the back-up foils between the encircling foil and bump foil. The rotor system simulating the weight of a typical micro gas turbine is designed and fabricated. The foil bearings developed are tested under this simulated load conditions at speeds above 50,000 rpm. The results obtained show that the rotor is completely airborne at speed slightly above 9000 rpm and at higher speeds the rotor is stable.
This paper describes the aerodynamic design and analysis of a high-pressure, single-stage axial flow turbine suitable for small gas turbine engine application using computational methods. The specifications of turbine were based on the need of a typical high-pressure compressor and geometric restrictions of small gas turbine engine. Baseline design parameters such as flow coefficient, stage loading coefficient are close to 0.23 and 1.22 respectively with maximum flow expansion in the NGV rows. In the preliminary design mode, the meanline approach is used to generate the turbine flow path and the design point performance is achieved by considering three blade sections at hub, mean and tip using the AMDC+KO+MK+BSM loss models to meet the design constraints. An average exit swirl angle of less than 5 degrees is achieved leading to minimum losses in the stage. Also, NGV and rotor blade numbers were chosen based on the optimum blade solidity. Blade profile is redesigned using the results from blade-to-blade analysis and through-flow analysis based on an enhanced Dawes BTOB3D flow solver. Using PbCFD (Pushbutton CFD) and commercially available CFD software ANSYS-CFX, aero-thermodynamic parameters like pressure ratios, aerodynamic power, and efficiencies are computed and these results are compared with one another. The boundary conditions, convergence criterion, and turbulence model used in CFD computations are set uniform for comparison with 8 per cent turbulence intensity. Grid independence study is performed at design point to optimize the grid density for off-design performance predictions. ANSYS-CFX and PbCFD have predicted higher efficiency of 3.4% and 1.2% respectively with respect to targeted efficiency of 89 per cent.
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