This work describes the continuous study that is being done in a small gas turbine that can be used for power generation purposes. Previous studies were conducted aiming to develop a gas generator able to be used in both applications, as a turbojet or as a turboshaft. The gas generator was designed, manufactured and is still under test. The thermodynamic cycle calculation was evaluated as a project-based class, hence, a power turbine was specified and its requirements were determined. The outlet conditions from the gas generator were used to perform the preliminary size of the power turbine. At this phase, the students must use 1D design models considering loss modeling to improve the machine design prediction. The meanline technique was used and the calculations at leading and trailing edges were extrapolated from hub-to-tip, using vortex design methods. With the airfoil stacking for each blade row was possible to determine the 3D geometry of the single stage axial flow turbine. This geometry was assembled in a CAD software to start the mesh generation procedure. After this step, a commercial CFD software was used to calculate the continuity, momentum and energy equations from fluid mechanics. The flow was considered fully turbulent and the two-equation SST turbulence model was set to determine the flow eddy viscosity. The results from preliminary design and 3D techniques were compared and evaluated to complete the first round of the design phase. In this work, experiences from the project-based class on turbomachinery design are described together with the challenges and difficulties that appeared during the project.
Turbodrill is a type of hydraulic axial turbomachine that rotates a bit by the action of the drilling fluid on turbine blades, which converts the hydraulic power provided by the high pressure from drilling fluid into mechanical power through turbine stages. The evaluation of hydraulic turbine performance characteristics are important to define feasible rotational speed and mass flow to attend the bit torque requirements during drilling through the post-salt and salt layers. As a result, optimum operational parameters are proposed for gaining the required rotational speed and torque for post-salt environments. The turbine motor presented in this study was established by design methods based on classical aeronautical turbomachinery blade profile to supply 30k Newton-meters (Nm) of torque requested by a polycrystalline diamond compact (PDC) bit to power the complex heterogeneous layer of rock. The performance evaluation of this innovative hydraulic turbine with 200 stages was carried out using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The simulation considers two different drilling fluid types, sea water and brine. Besides, different flow rates were considered to investigate how velocity vectors, pressure profile, output power and other performance parameters are affected. Due the large amount of data, the first and second stages of the turbine have been used to predict the performance characteristics. This assumption gives interesting results and avoids too heavy computational costs. A commercial CFD solver (ANSYS CFX 15.0®) was used to calculate the governing equations based on Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS equations) with the addition of turbulence model. The two-equation Shear-Stress Transport (SST) turbulence model was used to account the effects of flow eddy viscosity.
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