Advanced Recirculating Total Impingement Cooling of Turbine Airfoils

ABSTRACT: The future of gas turbine engines needed for propulsion and power in small unmanned military aircraft will hinge on the ability to enhance the efficiency for low fuel burn while maintaining world-class performance. Florida Turbine Technologies, Inc. (FTT) is currently developing spar-shell technologies to enable a revolutionary leap in gas turbine efficiency. The subject of this proposed program is to further develop the ARTICTM cooling technology for use in small military gas turbine engines. The challenges posed by adapting this technology to the very small scale required of unmanned and remotely piloted vehicles will be addressed during this program. Specific challenges include: i) adapting the cooling and manufacturing technologies to a very small scale and ii) development means of controlling leakage flows. FTT has already taken the first steps to transition the sequential impingement cooling technology into a light weight structure for application in such small engines. With this program, FTT proposes to produce a concept design and to demonstrate manufacturing feasibility with the production of prototype models. The results from the Phase I program will support a detailed design and fabrication of hardware to be tested within FTT"s core engine demonstrator during a follow-on Phase II SBIR program. BENEFIT: Development of this technology is expected to contribute to the achievement of VAATE program goals by significantly reducing turbine cooling requirements in future small turbomachinery systems. In addition to new power generation product offerings, commercial applications of this technology include retrofit into the host of small engines used for distributed power generation today.