Experimental Measurements of Pressure Losses in the Inter-Turbine Duct of a Gas Turbine

Abstract

The paper presents the total pressure experimental measurements carried out at the Romanian Research and Development Institute for Gas Turbines COMOTI in order to determine the total pressure losses in the Inter - Turbine Duct of a two spools gas turbine, as a function of the gas turbine operating regime (mass flow rate) and rotational speed. The Inter - Turbine Duct experimental assembly has been designed, manufactured and tested at COMOTI. The total pressures were measured as a function of the pre-swirling angle, which simulates the influence of the high pressure turbine rotational speed located upstream of the Inter turbine duct in the real gas turbine, as well as for three operational regimes, without the pre-swirlers modules. The results indicate that the total pressure loss along the Inter - Turbine Duct is of maximum 0.9 %. The lowest overall total pressure loss occurs at 0o pre-swirling angle, around 0.8%, while along the ITD struts, the lowest pressure loss is obtained for a 15o pre-swirling, below 0.1%. The influence of the operating regime on the total pressure loss was found to be linearly, the pressure loss increasing with the reduced mass flow rate, between 1% and 1.9% overall, and between about 0.1% and 0.4 % along the struts.