Heat transfer development at Solar Turbines: The gas turbine engine is around since 1930s.  The aero engine has gone through a technological revolution period from 1960 to 1990.  However, the industrial engine was lagging in advancement until 1990s.  Although heat transfer technologies from the aero engine may be applicable to the industrial engine in most part, development engineers face different needs and solutions time to time.  The industrial engine design is optimized for durability first and then cost, emission, power, performance while the aero engine is for power density first, and then durability, cost.  Over the last 20 years, significant heat transfer investigations were conducted in industrial gas turbine development, especially at Solar Turbines.  Those heat transfer technological progresses are presented, and the remaining future needs are discussed.

Experimental heat transfer methods in industrial gas turbine development: Experimental methods have made a significant progress in the measurements applied to gas turbine heat transfer and internal air systems in the last two decades.  This is an outcome of tremendous efforts to raise turbine inlet firing temperature, engine efficiency and to reduce emissions, not to mention the technological advancements in sensors and data processing.  The paper presents practical applications of the experimental methods that the author personally experienced and discusses advantages and disadvantages of each method as applied for various measurements of heat transfer coefficients, film effectiveness, flow characteristics, turbulence intensity, cooling effectiveness, and turbine disk cavity ingress.  These methods include, but not limited to IR camera based measurements, thermochromic liquid crystal technique, naphthalene sublimation technique (mass transfer), Pressure-Sensitive-Paint (PSP) Technique, Gas Chromatography for ingress measurements, thin film gauge and slip-ring or telemetry based measurement from rotating rig.

 

Prof. Hee-Koo Moon is currently a professor at Yonsei University (Seoul, South Korea), responsible for teaching gas turbine related courses, mentoring graduate students, conducting researches, and cooperating with industry.  Before joining the university, he was head of the Heat Transfer & Internal Air Systems Group at Solar Turbines Incorporated (USA), a solely owned subsidiary of Caterpillar Company.  He wasmanaging/leading heat transfer engineers responsible for preliminary and detailed heat transfer designs, analysis and experimental/test validation of entire engine thermal management systems and secondary flow circuits, which include combustor thermal design/analysis, turbine airfoil/disk cooling systems, transient tip clearance and transient thermal displacement analyses.  He was also responsible for defining the heat transfer/cooling technology strategy and processes, and for directing advanced heat transfer technology programs at both in-house (company heat transfer laboratory) and universities.