SpinOffs

Our CTO, Mark Anderson, takes a fundamental look at simple stall and its impact on turbochargers stability and range. This is the second video in this 2-part series. Be sure to watch Part 1 first!

Turbomachinery performance is almost always analyzed and tested with a fixed inflow condition. In other words, the assumption is that the inflow fluid temperature and pressure is defined and unchanging over the map of machine performance. Since varying conditions often exist in practice, the performance maps are sometimes normalized, as shown in the figure below. The pressure ratio of a compressor is plotted versus a corrected mass flow range and rotational speed. 

Our CTO, Mark Anderson, takes a fundamental look at simple stall and its impact on turbochargers stability and range. This is the first video in this 2-part series. 

In a previous blog, Fluid Phenomena Primer: Energy Versus Temperature, Specific Heat, I explained the behavior for gas phase fluids and how the temperature is affected at high energy levels.  In another blog, When Perfect is Good Enough - Perfect Gas Models, we looked at the simple perfect gas model.  In this blog, we’ll explore the next step up in the hierarchy of gas thermodynamic modeling: semi-perfect gas.

Valentine’s Day is February 14, and while some cynics refer to it as a “Hallmark holiday”, most people commemorate the day in some way. One of the biggest challenges is finding a card that perfectly captures the way you feel about someone, while also reflecting who you are.  Well, Concepts NREC has created some turbomachinery-themed Valentine’s Day cards for engineers. These fall into the Art end of our Art-to-Part Solution.

Temperature envelopes in the turbomachinery industry are constantly increasing as the state of the art evolves in pursuit of better performance. This means engineers need to design compressors with higher and higher exit temperatures, and turbines and nozzles with continuously increasing inlet temperatures. This rise in temperature greatly impacts the selection criteria for materials used. 

In my blog Flow Coefficient and Work Coefficient, I outlined the basic concept behind the flow and work coefficient. These nondimensional parameters are widely used to characterize axial and radial turbomachinery. Another widely used parameter for radial design is “specific speed”. For something with such a finite name, specific speed is perhaps the most mysterious and non-intuitive parameter in all of turbomachinery. In this blog, I'll lay the ground work for understanding specific speed.

 When designing compressors, engineers often use ruled-surface blades with the goal of making a shape that’s easily manufactured on a 5-axis machine.  Theses blades can be quickly machined in one pass by aligning the side of a cutting tool to the rulings. This process is often referred to as “flank milling.”  The alternative is to make many passes with the tool tip, a process known as “point milling”. For the right application, flank milling is often favored for shorter cutting times and better surface quality, but there are some caveats.

Have you ever needed to know the exact geometry of a compressor that has been running for years in your process plant? Perhaps you need to analyze how it would perform if the process fluid had to be changed to meet new government regulations. Or maybe there has been damage to the impeller and a complete mechanical analysis is required before a new one can be put into service. Eventually, everything, even well-designed turbomachinery, needs to be replaced or upgraded.

Gifts for Engineers can usually be segmented into a few categories: Things you have to put together, science fiction, gaming, new technology, and witty phrases printed on stuff. A Google search of the term "Best Gifts for Engineers" will quickly validate this claim.