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, bypass ratio, etc. The engine target (measurable) performance parameters may be thrust and specific fuel consumption 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.

Design Point Performance and Optimization of Humid Air Turbine Power Plants

“…The evaporation process in the saturator and an efficient droplet eliminator at the gas outlet of the saturator acts as a water-treatment device per se, allowing the use of non-demineralized water without undermining the life of the components. The thermal performance of the system is resolved using Turbomatch© [22,23], an in-house 0D performance software developed at Cranfield University, with external modules for the heat exchangers and saturator performance, and blade cooling mass flow requirements calculations. For the design point performance prediction, the power output is set constant at 40 MW with no mechanical losses considered.…”

Nonlinear design-point performance adaptation approaches and their comparisons for gas turbine applications

“…Roth et al introduces an optimization concept [1] for engine cycle model matching and a minimum variance estimator algorithm for performance matching of a turbofan engine [2]. Li et al introduces a Matrix Inverse adaptation method [3] and GA-based adaptation method [4] for gas turbine designpoint performance adaptation and successfully applies the method to the test data of an industrial gas turbine engine.…”

“…In this paper, the two design-point performance adaptation methods [3,4] developed by Li and his colleagues are applied to the design-point performance status estimation of an industrial gas turbine engine GE LM2500 + running at Manx Electricity Authority (MEA), UK. The advantages and disadvantages of the approach are discussed and compared with each other.…”

Advanced Cycles Large-Scale Aero-Derivative Gas Turbines: Performance Comparison

“…This is known as Off-Design (OD) performance [18]. Component characteristics as indicated by component maps of compressor, turbine, and combustor, are very useful in ascertaining off-design behaviour of the gas turbine system.…”

“…The Design Point of a gas turbine could be defined as the very condition in the operating range of a gas turbine when the engine is running at the very mass flow, speed, and pressure ratio for which the components were designed [18]. In establishing the design point of the engine, pressure ratio and TET that results in an overall highest thermal efficiency are normally determined from preliminary cycle calculations.…”