An Adaptation Approach for Gas Turbine Design-Point Performance Simulation

Abstract

Accurate simulation and understanding of gas turbine performance is very useful for gas turbine users. Such a simulation and performance analysis must start from a design point. When some of the engine component parameters for an existing engine are not available, they must be estimated in order that the performance analysis can be carried out. However, the initially simulated design point performance of the engine using estimated engine component parameters may give a result that is different from the actual measured performance. This difference may be reduced with better estimation of these unknown component parameters. However, this can become a difficult task for performance engineers, let alone those without enough engine performance knowledge and experience, when the number of design point component parameters and the number of measurable/target performance parameters become large. In this paper, a gas turbine design point performance adaptation approach has been developed to best estimate the unknown design point component parameters and match the available design point engine measurable/target performance. In the approach, the initially unknown component parameters may be compressor pressure ratios and efficiencies, turbine entry temperature, turbine efficiencies, air mass flow rate, cooling flows, by-pass ratio, etc. The engine target (measurable) performance parameters may be thrust and SFC for aero engines, shaft power and thermal efficiency for industrial engines, gas path pressures and temperatures, etc. To select initially the design point component parameters, a bar chart has been used to analyze the sensitivity of the engine target performance parameters to the design point component parameters. The developed adaptation approach has been applied to a design point performance matching problem of an industrial gas turbine engine GE LM2500+ operating in Manx Electricity Authority (MEA), UK. The application shows that the adaptation approach is very effective and fast to produce a set of design point component parameters of a model engine that matches the actual engine performance very well. Theoretically the developed techniques can be applied to other gas turbine engines.

Advanced gas turbine performance modelling using response surface methods

“…The design point thermodynamic performance of the topping cycle is resolved by means of Turbomatch ( 9 , 10 ) an in-house 0D gas-turbine performance software developed at Cranfield University, with external modules for the heat exchangers and blade cooling calculations. The bottoming cycle is simulated by means of SteamoMatch, another in-house 0D performance software developed at Cranfield University for steam Rankine cycle modelling and simulation ( 11 ) .…”

Non-linear model calibration for off-design performance prediction of gas turbines with experimental data

“…A design point performance adaptation (29) for the model at 30 MW is carried out in order to match the available design point performance of the engine. Once the engine model has been properly updated for the selected design point, an initial compressor map is generated.…”

Creep-Life Usage Analysis and Tracking for Industrial Gas Turbines

“…The thermodynamic performance model has been adapted to the real engine at both design and off-design operating conditions by using the adaptation method developed at Cranfield [21]- [23] and the field data of the engine. This is to ensure that the model provide accurate performance predictions that will be used for lifing…”