High-Accuracy Turbine Performance Measurements in Short-Duration Facilities

Abstract

This paper describes work done in preparation for the measurement of stage efficiency in a short-duration shock-tunnel facility. Efficiency measurements in this facility require knowledge of the flow path pressure and temperature, rotating system moment of inertia, and mass flow. This paper describes in detail an improved temperature compensation technique for the pressure transducers (Kulite) to reduce thermal drift problems, and measurements of the rotating system moment of inertia. The temperature compensation has shown that the conversion to pressure is accurate to within 0.689 kPa (0.1 psi) over the 40°C test range. The measurement of the moment of inertia is shown to be accurate to within 0.7% of the average value.