Gas Turbine Combustor Panel Overlap Cooling
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional gas turbine engine combustors face challenges in withstanding high stress, temperature, and pressure, leading to potential distress in hot gas environments, and require improved cooling characteristics to enhance operating longevity.
Innovation Solution
A combustor configuration featuring a support structure with panels that include a first panel extending beyond the second panel, creating an air gap for airflow, with features like grooves or effusion holes on the leading edge of the second panel to facilitate cooling, and potentially using heat shield panels mounted to an annular structure.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If conventional combustor shell arrangements are used, then structural simplicity is maintained, but regions experience distress due to hot gas environment and cooling characteristics are insufficient
Solution Approach 1:
The combustor shell is divided into multiple discrete panels (first panel, second panel, third panel) that can be independently configured and assembled. This segmentation allows for optimized cooling designs on each panel while maintaining overall structural integrity, resolving the contradiction between improved cooling characteristics and structural simplicity.
Solution Approach 2:
The invention introduces a circumferential air gap dimension between panels that extends around the combustor. This additional spatial dimension provides a new pathway for cooling airflow that complements traditional cooling methods, enabling improved cooling characteristics without fundamentally redesigning the entire combustor structure.
2Reliability
If panels are arranged without overlap, then manufacturing simplicity is maintained, but hot air egress into air gaps cannot be prevented
Solution Approach 1:
The trailing edge of each panel is designed to extend beyond the leading edge of the adjacent panel before assembly, creating an overlapping configuration. This preliminary design feature ensures that hot air containment is built into the structure itself, preventing hot air egress into air gaps without requiring additional complex sealing mechanisms during assembly.
3Reliability
If cooling airflow is increased, then cooling characteristics are improved, but thermal growth and distortion of panels increase
Solution Approach 1:
Cooling airflow is directed specifically into the circumferential air gap between panels, creating a localized cooling zone at the panel interfaces. This local cooling approach provides effective thermal management at critical locations without subjecting the entire panel structure to high-velocity cooling flows, thereby reducing thermal growth and distortion while maintaining cooling efficiency.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
This configuration effectively prevents hot air egress into air gaps, enhances cooling by creating a cooling film, and accounts for thermal growth, thereby improving the longevity and efficiency of gas turbine engine components.
Implementation Method 1
an air gap between the trailing edge of the first panel and the leading edge of the second panel forms at least a portion of a circumferential air gap for the combustor
Implementation Method 2
enhances cooling by creating a cooling film
Data Source
Figure 1
Figure 2A~2B
Figure 3A~3C
AI summary
The present disclosure relates to combustor configurations and components for a gas turbine engine (100). In one embodiment, a combustor (105) for a gas turbine engine includes a support structure and a plurality of panels (115) mounted to the structure. The plurality of panels define a combustion cavity (120) of the combustor. The plurality of panels include a first panel (126; 205; 305) having a leading (315) and trailing edge (135; 215), and a second panel (127; 210; 310) having a leading edge (140; 220; 320) and trailing edge (325), wherein a trailing edge of the first panel extends beyond the leading edge of the second panel and wherein the second panel is mounted to the support structure aft of the first panel.