Program Manager: Dr. Leo Christodoulou
The goal of this program is to develop and demonstrate an evaporative cooling system for gas turbine engine turbine blades. Turbine blades are currently cooled with bleed air directed into internal passages within the blades. The current approach taps compressor bleed air that might otherwise be used in the engine compression-combustion-expansion cycle, limiting specific fuel consumption efficiency. Evaporative cooling combined with new high-temperature tolerant turbine blade materials has the potential to improve engine-specific fuel consumption by up to 20 percent in a technology area where tenths of a percent improvement is considered a breakthrough.
|
