SFB 1029:  TurbIn - Substantial Efficiency Increase in Gas Turbines through Direct Use of Coupled Unsteady Combustion and Flow Dynamics

• Subject Area: Thermal Engineering/Process Engineering ; Computer Science, Systems and Electrical Engineering ; Mechanical and Industrial Engineering ; Mathematics
• Term: from 2012 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 200291049

A significant increase of the efficiency of gas turbines is the objective of the CRC 1029 and shall be achieved by changing the combustion concept towards an approximately constant volume combustion. Two concepts have been investigated up to now. While the pulsed detonation combustion bases on an extremely fast combustion triggered by shock waves, it also causes large pressure fluctuations. These are largely reduced by the alternative concept of a shockless explosion combustion, where a specific layering of the fuel and the utilization of acoustic phenomena lead to a homogeneous auto-ignition of the whole combustion tube. The third period of CRC 1029 will additionally include the rotating detonation combustion. Due to pressure waves travelling in circumferential direction at very high frequencies, this concept seems to be very promising for implementation in gas turbines as well.In contrast to conventional gas turbine processes, all described combustion concepts feature periodically unsteady pressure waves and will thus have a significant impact on the operating conditions of the turbomachinery components within the gas turbine. Methods and experiments have been investigated to effectively reduce the pressure pulsation at the interfaces between compressor, combustion chamber and turbine. Furthermore, sufficient cooling of the first turbine stage as well as flow stability at the compressor exit must be safeguarded and have thus been further focus areas of CRC 1029. One objective was to reduce the additional effort to a minimum to protect the overall efficiency gain of the whole gas turbine. Within the third period, the developed measures shall be driven towards a higher degree of maturity within relevant gas turbine conditions. For the same reason, the holistic assessment of the engine, which was solely based on well-developed thermodynamic methods so far will now be expanded to look at structural mechanics’ aspects as well.Within the third period, the achieved results of the projects shall coalesce in the setup of a demonstrator platform. It shall serve to develop process control strategies in different load regimes as well as to derive representative boundary conditions for the experiments with dedicated stand-alone rigs of compressor and turbine.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres

Completed projects

• A01 - Pulse Detonation Combustion at Gas Turbine Conditions (Project Heads Moeck, Jonas ;  Paschereit, Christian Oliver )
• A02 - Development of reduced models for pulse detonation engines (Project Heads Mehrmann, Volker ;  Sesterhenn, Jörn Lothar )
• A03 - Pulsed shockless combustion (Project Heads Klein, Rupert ;  Paschereit, Christian Oliver )
• A04 - Investigation and optimization of the pulsating detonative combustion cycle (Project Head Reiss, Julius )
• A05 - Modelling, monitoring and control of the pulsating combustion (Project Head King, Rudibert )
• A07 - Development of chemistry models for pulsating combustion (Project Head Pitsch, Heinz )
• A08 - Optimization of combustion mixtures for shockless explosion combustion (Project Head Djordjevic, Neda )
• B01 - Active flow control of stator cascades at periodically-transient boundary conditions (Project Heads Liebich, Robert ;  Peitsch, Dieter )
• B02 - Impact of rotor-stator-interaction with periodic choke by adaptive blade control (Project Heads Liebich, Robert ;  Meyer, Robert ;  Thamsen, Paul Uwe )
• B03 - Dynamically forced impingement cooling in realistic turbine blades (Project Heads Haucke, Frank ;  Peitsch, Dieter )
• B04 - Numerical simulation of pulsation impinging jet arrays II (Project Heads Reiss, Julius ;  Sesterhenn, Jörn Lothar )
• B05 - Cooling and Performance of a Turbine under periodically unsteady inflow conditions (Project Head Peitsch, Dieter )
• B06 - Rapid control of transient effects in turbo-machines (Project Head King, Rudibert )
• C01 - Experiments and numerical simulations on combustor-plenum-interactions for pressure gain combustion (Project Heads Klein, Rupert ;  Oberleithner, Kilian ;  Paschereit, Christian Oliver )
• C02 - Inflow and interaction of cofluent starting jets into a plenum with minimal losses (Project Heads Reiss, Julius ;  Sesterhenn, Jörn Lothar )
• D01 - Holistic evaluation and improvement of a gas turbine with a periodic pressure-gain combustion (Project Heads Peitsch, Dieter ;  Stathopoulos, Panagiotis )
• MGK - Integrated Research Training Group (Project Heads Djordjevic, Neda ;  Enghardt, Lars ;  Moeck, Jonas ;  Stathopoulos, Panagiotis )
• Z - Central Task of the Collaborative Research Center (Project Heads King, Rudibert ;  Peitsch, Dieter )

• Applicant Institution: Technische Universität Berlin
• Participating University: Freie Universität Berlin; Universität Bayreuth
• Spokespersons: Professor Dr.-Ing. Rudibert King, until 12/2018; Professor Dr.-Ing. Dieter Peitsch, since 1/2019