Thermodynamic and Emission Performance Analysis of CMC Bladed Gas Turbine

Increasing in the turbine rotor inlet temperature improves the aviation gas turbine efficiency, while on the other hand, but also leads to a higher requirement for blade cooling air, which in turn reduces the gain in efficiency achieved by increasing temperature. Turbine rotor inlet temperature has been increasing with the entry of highly-efficient gas turbines have been developed for the last decades for the aviation market. Around one fifth of the compressed air is extracted from the compressor and is used for blade cooling purposes and is thus not used in the actual power/thrust generation process, which has a negative impact on the engine efficiency. For this reason, new cooling methods and hot-gas path component materials that will be compatible with these high temperature’s gases are among the areas being analyzed. The ceramic-matrix-composite (CMC) material have the potential to reduce or eliminate the need of cooling of hot-gas - path component i.e. blades of turbine thereby increasing aviation engine efficiency. In the present work firstly, the power output, thermal and exergy efficiencies and emission performance were calculated for ceramic-matrix-composite bladed, gas turbine. The amalgamation of properties of both ceramic fibers and ceramic matrix gives CMC materials the advantage of high fracture strength with high elastic moduli. By reducing the coolant flow rate for the turbine blade, the gas turbine efficiency is increased. Result shows that by increasing the TRIT, turbine engine efficiency and specific work output are both increased. It has also been observed that emission performance of the gas turbine also gets enhanced.