SpinOffs

There are two dominant manufacturing methods used to produce turbomachinery parts – Casting and 5-axis machining. This blog will explore some of the applications and restrictions of these two methods.

Engineers who design aircraft engines face a conundrum. Gas turbines in aircraft engines have to operate at very high temperatures for thermal efficiency and power output. These high temperatures put thermal stresses on the turbine blade materials. This requires that the blades be cooled. The most common way of doing this is using cooled air extracted from the engine’s compressor. Sadly, this air extraction decreases the thermal efficiency of the engine.

Supercritical CO2 cycles have the potential to significantly improve efficiency and reduce emissions in power generation. However, the unique fluid dynamic properties of supercritical CO2 that enable these higher efficiencies also complicate the design and layout of the system. This is particularly true with regard to the systems turbomachinery components.  This is because of the highly non-linear properties of CO2, which pose significant difficulties in modeling.  Today’s commercial software is not optimized to help designers working on these types of systems.