Axial Turbines

Improving Performance and Optimizing Design

Course Overview

This course will provide both design and application engineers with an understanding of axial turbine design and performance. Techniques by which a design can be optimized for new applications are emphasized, and the complete process for producing new designs or developing new components for existing machines is described, from the beginning to the final detailed design. Throughout the course, the effective use of modern computer systems, CFD, and FEA stress analysis codes is emphasized. The course also features design and analysis examples using modern software tools.

Program Outline

Turbine fundamentals and parameters

• General introduction
• Fundamental principles of turbine expansion
• Blading terminology
• Nondimensional parameters
• Reaction
• Airfoil loading and diffusion factors
• Stage loading
• Incidence and deviation

Aerodynamic loss modeling

• Loss classification
• Profile, secondary, and clearance losses
• Incidence loss
• Mach and Reynolds number effects
• Control of viscous effects
• Loss models

Preliminary and throughflow design

• Design procedure
• Selection of reaction and airfoil number
• Blade stresses and creep
• Low- and high-cycle fatigue
• Radial work distribution

Airfoil design

• Stator and rotor design
• Two- and three-dimensional design
• Subsonic and transonic airfoils
• Stacking optimization
• Material capabilities

Advanced turbine design

• Design challenges and technology trends
• Nozzle design concepts
• Tip leakage desensitization
• 3D viscous and unsteady design
• Impact on efficiency and design time

Introduction to steam turbine design

• Operating principles and parameters
• Steam turbine stage classification
• Partial admission
• Wetness
• Design trends

Axial turbine design examples

Who Should Attend

Engineers in the turbine industries, including gas turbine, steam turbine, turbocharger, air motors, process, and cryogenic expanders. This course is an excellent introduction and briefing for engineers new to this field, while established engineers will gain fresh insights and be introduced to
the latest ideas.

Managers and sales personnel in these fields will gain insight into turbine technology. Turbine maintenance and field service engineers and users will better appreciate the problems of turbine performance and operation.

Materials

The course materials have been developed over many years and are regularly reviewed to ensure that they are kept up to date. Course material is based on internal R&D experience of Concepts NREC and developments published by colleagues in the turbomachinery industries and universities in the USA, Europe, and throughout the world.

Instructors

Dr. Nick Baines has a Bachelors degree in Engineering from Cambridge University, UK, and a Ph.D from Bath University, UK. His Ph.D thesis was in the field of radial inflow turbines for turbocharging. Subsequently he worked at Rolls-Royce plc on cooling air-feed system design for high-pressure turbine blades, and as Rolls-Royce Research Fellow at Oxford University on axial turbine aerodynamics.

In 1983 he joined Imperial College, London, as lecturer in Mechanical Engineering. His research interests returned to radial turbines, and he supervised an extensive research program aimed at understanding and predicting the performance of such turbines under the pulse flow conditions experienced in turbochargers. Another project was to develop the technology of small gas turbine engines for a hybrid gas turbine-electric car engine.

Since 1993 he has worked as a Consulting Engineer for Concepts NREC. In this role he has extensive experience in turbomachine design and analysis in axial and radial turbines for hydraulic, steam and gas power generation, turbocharging, and propulsion turbines, as well as design of centrifugal compressor for refrigeration. Projects have been undertaken for aerospace and industrial turbomachinery designers and users worldwide. He has also developed and validated performance prediction methods for radial and axial turbines and axial compressor stages. As Director of Education and Publication Services at Concepts NREC, he has commissioned and managed a series of textbooks on turbomachinery design and related engineering textbooks.

Dr. Baines has published four books and numerous professional papers. He has received three prizes from the Institution of Mechanical Engineers for his publications.

Dr. Oleg Dubitsky received his Ph.D and masters in Mechanical Engineering at Dartmouth College. Prior to joining Concepts NREC in 1995, he worked at the Laboratory of Heat Power Engineering of the Ukrainian Ministry of Energy and the Department of Heat and Nuclear Power Engineering at the Kiev Polytechnic Institute. He has developed a number of solutions to unify real gas solvers for turbine and compressor applications, compressible and incompressible flows, improvements in predicting performance of transonic and supersonic flows for turbines and compressors,  simplified stall prediction models and two-zone modeling. Dr. Dubitsky has published and coauthored technical papers for various professional organizations in the areas of turbine and compressor performance and development of turbomachinery design software. As Corporate Fellow and Associate Director of Software Development he is responsible for development of the reduced through-flow tool Axial™, practical implementation of various projects for automated optimization, customized teaching and training courses.

This course runs sequentially with the Radial Turbine Course for ease of attending both classes if desired.

Course registration