Part-Load Performance of Gas Turbines: Part I — A Novel Compressor Map Generation Approach Suitable for Adaptive Simulation

Abstract

Part-load performance prediction of gas turbines is strongly dependent on detailed understanding of engine component behavior and mainly that of compressors. The accuracy of gas turbine engine models relies on the compressor performance maps, which are obtained in costly rig tests and remain manufacturer’s proprietary information. The gas turbine research community has addressed this limitation by scaling default generic compressor maps in order to match the targeted off-design measurements. This approach is efficient in small range of operating conditions but becomes less accurate for wide range of operating conditions. In this part of the paper a novel method of compressor map generation which has a primary objective to improve the accuracy of engine models performance at part load conditions is presented. This is to generate a generic form of equations to represent the lines of constant speed and constant efficiency of the compressor map for a generic compressor. The parameters that control the shape of the compressor map have been expressed in their simplest form in order to aid the adaptation process. The proposed compressor map generation method has the capacity to refine current gas turbine performance adaptation techniques, and it has been integrated into Cranfield’s PYTHIA gas turbine performance simulation and diagnostics software tool.

Performance-based health monitoring, diagnostics and prognostics for condition-based maintenance of gas turbines: A review

“…Although the knowledge of modeling gas turbines at the design point and in off-design conditions can be found in many references such as [39,40], as indicated by many studies (e.g., ref. [41,42]), the major drawback in development of these models is the lack of component maps. These data are usually proprietary to the gas turbine manufacturers, and only a limited portion of the performance data, in the form of characteristics charts derived from experimental tests or from an engine performance prediction program referred as the "engine deck", might be available to the final users.…”

Development and validation of a full-range performance analysis model for a three-spool gas turbine with turbine cooling

“…The derivation of the ratio of the heat transfer coefficients in Eqs. (12) and (16) can be found in Ref. [28], which reads, Thus, when the cooling technology level parameter is known and a tentative value of fractional cooling flow is set, the corresponding maximum blade metal temperature can be calculated using Eqs.…”

“…Lee [11] developed a performance simulation program for an IGCC gas turbine; this simulation is based on a stage-stacking method for evaluating the compressor characteristic and an off-design efficiency variation function for the turbine characteristic, which are useful in the absence of component maps. Tsoutsanis presented a novel method of compressor map generation by deriving a generic form of the equations used to represent the lines of constant speed and constant efficiency for a generic compressor [12] and applied the method to the performance analysis of a GE LM2500þ aeroderivative gas turbine [13]. Aguilar [14] used a component-based off-design calculation program GSP to analyze the regulation methods of a combined heat and power plant based on two-spool gas turbines.…”

Aero Gas Turbine Flight Performance Estimation Using Engine Gas Path Measurements

“…Li et al developed an influence coefficient matrix-based adaptation method for gas turbine design point performance adaptation [11] and different nonlinear adaptation methods using genetic algorithms to improve the accuracy of off-design performance modeling [12][13][14]. More recent development of off-design performance adaptation has been published by Tsoutsanis et al [15][16][17].…”