Numerical Simulation Application for the Design and Fine-Tuning of Small-Sized Gas Turbine Engine Combustor

ABSTRACT

The small-sized GTE are used more and more both as the basis of power plants and power machines for various purposes. The technical and operational characteristics of these engines are largely determined by the design quality of their combustion chambers (CC). One of the most advanced methods of CC scientific investigation is the bench testing. However, such CC operation study is complicated by labour-intensiveness of an experiment and its significant costs. Therefore, in recent years GTE designers started to use widely the numerical simulation for these purposes. However, the level of such calculation development does not allow often to solve the issue of CC fine-tuning in order to achieve the required parameters. It is also difficult to determine the reliability degree of such calculations. The preliminary calculation of the combustion chamber was performed first of all. Its purpose is the CC shape development and its determination of its geometric dimensions. At that, the main requirement was to ensure the possibilities of one CC placement between the previously-designed compressor and the turbine and the performance of a whole set of technical specifications by the engine. At the second stage using The CC fine-tuning was performed in order to optimize the performance by using CFD-calculation. At that the calculated method was used for which the verification has been performed by the bench tests. Such a CC fine-tuning allowed to reduce the product development period and improve its characteristics.

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