The research subjects at the GTT are closely related to real applications and are addressed through a direct collaboration with industry. With the increasing need of cost-efficient, powerful and flexible turbomachines, the investigation of turbomachinery flow has become critical to improving their design.
The activities of our scientific group focus on turbomachinery flows, including compressor and turbine blade configurations, as well as turbine blade cooling and plasma effect. Steady and unsteady flows at subsonic and transonic conditions are being studied using both experimental and numerical approaches.
These investigations are associated with considerable difficulties due to today’s highly specific needs with particularly complicated turbomachinery flows. This includes important three-dimensional effects, transonic conditions and numerous source of unsteadiness like stator/rotor interactions, wake/rotor interactions, turbulence and aeroelasticity.
The power and efficiency of a gas turbine improves by increasing the turbine inlet temperature. Since the latter often exceeds the maximum allowable material temperature of the blades, they have to be cooled to guarantee safe operating conditions. It is therefore necessary to improve the understanding of heat transfer phenomena for industrial turbomachinery and general applications.
GTT took/takes part in several European and Swiss research projects related to these efforts:
- FUTURE Flutter-Free Turbomachinery Blades (2008-2013)
- KW2020 KraftWerk 2020 (contribution for advanced cooling systems of turbine blades) (since 2009)
- PLASMAERO Useful PLASMa for AEROdynamic Control (2009-2012)
- NEWAC New Aero Engine Core Concept (2006-2011) Official video, GTT video, GTT video (ashes)
- HISAC Environmentally Friendly High Speed Aircraft (2005-2009)
- TATEF2 Turbine Aero-Thermal External Flows (2004-2008)
- ADTurBII Aeroelastic Design of Turbine Blades II (2000-2005)
- ICTB Internal Cooling of Turbine Blades (1998-2002)
- ADTurB Aeromechanical Design of Turbine Blades (1996-2000)
