Colour changing material for the estimation of flue gas radiation on the miniature gas turbine surface

Abstract

The gas turbine is being used in the applications of the aircraft propulsion system and land-based power generating systems more effectively. The manufacturers should optimise the temperature of the gas turbine engine components to enhance the life span of the components. The present research work concentrates on determining the surface temperature gradient on the fabricated turbine blades using a colour changing paint based on temperature attained on the surface. A calibration database has been created, and the surface temperature has been detected based on the available colour contours on the blade surface using human vision. An image processing algorithm has also been proposed for accurate temperature measurement on the blade surface. The obtained surface temperature using colour changing paint multi-colour change 350-8 has been calibrated with the conventional measurement technique IR thermography for experimental validation. A computational fluid dynamics simulation model of the turbine blade has been simulated to predict the surface temperature of blades using analysis systems fluid dynamics for numerical validation. The experimental and numerical validation results have shown a nominal value of error, which proves that the surface temperature gradient can be easily predicted with the help of temperature indicating paint using the proposed algorithm. The study has been extended further to evaluate the amount of emissive power radiated by the flue gas on the turbine blade surface based on the temperature and the wavelength of the colour obtained for the health monitoring of the blade.