Performance degradation of gas turbine is a common phenomenon during operation. How to maintain the deteriorated gas turbines and improve their performance at a low cost is important in engineering. In this paper, the maintenance method based on reassembling the degraded components of used gas turbine engines was studied. The research object was a 2MW gas turbine engine. One new machine and four deteriorated machines with different degrees of performance deterioration were studied in this work. Methods of performance test, 3D scanning, 3D steady simulation and gas turbine performance simulation were used to study the component characteristics differences of each deteriorated gas turbine and its influence on overall performance. The maintenance method of exchanging compressors or turbines was also studied.

 When carrying out the performance test, the inlet and outlet parameters of compressor and turbine, shaft rotation speed, volumetric flow rate of fuel and output power were measured. And then, the compressor and turbine performances of 5 gas turbines in multiplied working conditions were solved.

 Blue ray scanning was carried out to get the 3D geometry of one of the deteriorated gas turbines. And the single flow channel models of compressor and turbine were obtained by averaging blade profiles circumferentially. Steady CFD simulation was used to obtain the component characteristics of both the new and the deteriorated gas turbines. After comparing the component characteristics acquired by performance test and CFD, it was found that the CFD results showed the same performance degradation trend as that obtained by test, which verified the accuracy of numerical simulation.

 The compressor and turbine performance curves of both the new and deteriorated gas turbines were acquired by CFD simulation. And the performance curves were corrected based on test data. The error between the compressor flow rate characteristics and test data is about 1.5% and that between the turbine efficiency characteristics and test data is lower than 2%. For the other deteriorated gas turbines, the performance curves were obtained by correcting that of the scanned gas turbine according to test data and the accuracy of this method were verified. At the same time, it revealed the cause of performance differences between deteriorated gas turbines from the point of component characteristics. Further, the overall performance of gas turbines composed of reassembled compressors and turbines were solved. A kind of assembly that can improve the output power most was found and it was then verified by test.

 It is showed that by using the whole method developed in this paper, the best assembly way of deteriorated gas turbine components can be found. And an engine with improved performance can be obtained by assembly of deteriorated gas turbine components, which is at a very low cost.


Improving Gas Turbine Performance Through Reassembling Degraded Components: An Experimental and Computational Study

Division / Sponsor:
International Gas Turbine Institute (IGTI)

Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/GT/GT2020/volume/84058

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