An adaptation approach for gas turbine design-point performance simulation

Accurate simulation and understanding of gas turbine performance is very useful for gas turbine users. Such a simulation and performance analysis must start from a design point. When some of the engine component parameters for an existing engine are not available, they must be estimated in order that the performance analysis can be carried out. However the initially simulated design-point performance of the engine using estimated engine component parameters may give a result that is different from the actual measured performance. This difference may be reduced with better estimation of these unknown component parameters. However, this can become a difficult task for performance engineers, let alone those without enough engine performance knowledge and experience, when the number of design-point component parameters and the number of measurable/target performance parameters become large. In this paper, a gas turbine design-point performance adaptation approach has been developed to best estimate the unknown design-point component parameters and match the available design-point engine measurable/target performance. In the approach, the initially unknown component parameters may be compressor pressure ratios and efficiencies, turbine entry temperature, turbine efficiencies, air mass./low rate, cooling flows, bypass ratio, etc. The engine target (measurable) performance parameters may be thrust and specific fuel consumption for aero engines, shaft power and thermal efficiency for industrial engines, gas path pressures and temperatures, etc. To select, initially, the design point component parameters, a bar chart has been used to analyze the sensitivity of the engine target performance parameters to the design-point component parameters. The developed adaptation approach has been applied to a design-point performance matching problem of an industrial gas turbine engine GE LM2500+ operating in Manx Electricity Authority (MEA), UK. The application shows that the adaptation approach is very effective and fast to produce a set of design-point component parameters of a model engine that matches the actual engine performance very well. Theoretically, the developed techniques can be applied to other gas turbine engines.