Design, integration and operation of a rotating combustor-turbine-interaction test rig within the scope of EC FP7 project FACTOR

Abstract

Following the industrial trend of increasingly integrative design and analysis of the combustorturbine interface, the EC FP7 project FACTOR was launched many years ago. The project ended in late 2017 after successful completion of the experimental test campaign involving blank-sheet design rotating turbine rig hardware, which was assembled, integrated and operated in DLR's turbine test facility NG-Turb in Göttingen, Germany. This paper highlights the DLR contribution to FACTOR including the 1.5 stage turbine rig's mechanical design, instrumentation and integration as well as final part assembly to a working rig. Additionally, DLR was responsible for rig operation and overall measurement campaign fulfilment including the acquisition of static pressure and temperature data as well as aerothermal 5-hole-probe traverses in different measurement planes. The implemented combustor simulator created a characteristic flow profile to and through the turbine with strongly varying flow angles and temperatures, that posed a challenge for the applied measurement techniques. NOMENCLATURE

Ultra-Compact Traverse System for Transonic Annular Cascade

“…Two designs with some similarity to the present system are those used in the Oxford Cold Heat Transfer Tunnel (CHTT) (Martinez-Botas et al, 1993), and the new Next Generation Turbine Test Facility (NGTurb) at the German Aerospace Center (Krumme et al, 2019). In the CHTT the traverse system was integrated into an upstream cassette, with the radial traverse gear inside the pressure vessel, driven circumferentially by a piston attached to the cassette exterior.…”

Generation of Realistic Boundary Conditions at the Combustion Chamber/Turbine Interface Using Large-Eddy Simulation

“…In summary, the FACTOR project was dedicated to the analysis of interactions between lean-burn combustion chambers and high-pressure turbines. This project generated experimental data around two test rigs: a tri-sector combustion chamber studied at UNIFI [10] and a complete annular chamber equipped with its HP turbine stage installed at DLR Goettingen [11]. The objective of the present study is to understand the interactions and the coupling between the combustion chamber and the turbine, by means of advanced diagnostics such as SPOD.…”