Advancing Additive Manufacturing for Turbine Applications

Integrated Turbine Component Cooling Designs Facilitated by Additive Manufacturing and Optimization

Department of Energy – University Turbine Systems Research Program

The goal of this proposed study is to use AM (additive manufacturing) technology to develop improved overall cooling effectiveness for turbine components, particularly vanes and blades. Two aspects of using AM technology will be explored—use of AM to manufacture turbine component with complex features that cannot be manufactured with conventional techniques, and use of AM for rapid prototyping and testing of turbine components that will ultimately be manufactured using conventional techniques. A fundamental part of this research program is a focus on overall cooling effectiveness, i.e. the combined effects of internal cooling configurations, film cooling, and thermal barrier coatings (TBC). Although the vast majority of studies in the open literature treat these as independent cooling processes that can be arbitrarily combined, there are a number of studies (many in our laboratories) that highlight the interaction among these cooling mechanisms causing significant effects on overall cooling performance.

Testing and Characterization of Additively Manufactured Tip Shoe and Combustor

Solar Turbines

A turbine rotor assembly includes a segmented shroud, also known as a turbine tip shoe, for minimizing the turbine tip clearance and providing a flowpath for the turbine tip region. The tip show, shown here, consists of seals on the circumferential faces to prevent leakage and is supported by hooks. The tip shoe experiences high temperatures and thermal gradients which induce high mechanical stresses. Reducing the metal temperatures experienced by the tip shoe by cooling it during operation will minimize the stresses and improve the useful lifetime of the component.

There is a need to improve the cooling of the tip shoe to do the following: i) minimize maximum temperatures < 1500F, and ii) minimize thermal gradients. The specific objectives of this proposed effort is to: minimize the cooling flow and leverage AM features like conformal cooling, lattice structures, functionally graded materials to improve the overall durability of the component.

Novel Hot Gas Path Components for Gas Turbine Engines Enabled by Materials Development

Department of Energy-Oak Ridge National Lab

Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), University of California-Santa Barbara (UCSB), The Pennsylvania State University (PSU) and Solar Turbines (Solar) seeks to enhance the performance of gas turbine engines used for combined heat and power (CHP) applications through the introduction of novel hot gas path components (tip shroud and nozzle segments) that have advanced materials and enhanced cooling features that can only be fabricated through additive manufacturing (AM). The proposed effort dovetails with an existing effort funded by Solar Turbines at Penn State to develop a new cooling design for the tip shroud, also referred to as the Tip Shoe. The proposed effort for this DOE EERE project, however, is distinctly different from that of the existing Solar project because the focus of the DOE EERE proposal is to develop new materials and new manufacturing processes that will further advance the state of the art cooling methods for the tip shroud. Advances in both high temperature materials, developed by UCSB, and new advanced manufacturing methods, developed by ORNL, result in opportunities for further evolving new cooling designs that need to be evaluated with regards to the heat transfer and pressure loss performance. Penn State’s responsibility in this team effort is to develop new cooling technologies and then evaluate the heat transfer and pressure loss on new cooling designs using advanced materials and processes.