Radial Turbines

Improving Performance and Optimizing Design

Course Overview

The course will cover the characteristics, design, and performance of radial and mixed-flow turbines. The technology base of available information is surveyed, and based on this, the process of design is described from specification through meanline analysis, blade geometry generation, and CFD and FEA analysis. The course also features design and analysis examples using modern software tools.

Program Outline

Introduction

• Fundamentals
• Turbine stage performance

Radial and mixed-flow turbine aerodynamics

• Basic analysis of a stage
• Rotor flow processes
• Rotor loss modeling
• Volute
• Nozzle

Variable geometry turbines

• Variable geometry volutes
• Pivoting vane nozzles
• Sliding sidewall nozzles
• Performance of VGT

Radial and mixed-flow turbine mechanical design

• Causes of failure
• Stress analysis
• Creep analysis
• High- and low-cycle fatigue
• Rotor manufacturing and materials

Radial and mixed-flow turbine design

• Design overview
• Scaling
• Design based on stage or component correlations
• Stage modeling and optimization
• Blade layout and design
• Throughflow and blade-to-blade analysis
• CFD analysis

Radial 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.
 

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

Course registration