Primary Surface Heat Exchanger for a Ground Vehicle Gas Turbine

A primary surface counterflow, annular heat exchanger has been developed to minimize fuel consumption in vehicular gas turbines. Hot exhaust gas from the engine flows radially outwards and cooler air flows radially inwards, resulting in a maximum of 665 kW of energy transfer. The recuperator has been the major contributor to the high reputation earned by the Textron Lycoming AGT1500 automotive gas turbine engine with 10,000 engines shipped and over 6 million hours of total operation. The following paper describes the principles of aerothermal and structural design, the technological developments and the processes involved in the manufacture of the heat exchanger.