GOALI/Graduate Student Industrial Fellowship: Improving Gas Turbine Energy Efficiency by Laser Drilling

9632042科瓦切维奇这个工业/研究生奖将支持两名研究生探索通过细孔激光打孔的创新提高燃气轮机的效率。通过精确控制涡轮叶片上小气膜冷却孔的大小、形状和方向，可以减少冷却涡轮叶片所需的压缩空气量。普拉特和惠特尼和控制视觉是这一奖项的行业合作者。研究生将在普拉特和惠特尼公司进行实验工作，使用控制视觉公司提供的新开发的工业视觉系统，用于在激光打孔过程中进行传感。他们将研究激光打孔过程的H无穷自适应控制方法和Mu综合鲁棒控制设计，使用孔大小和形状的视觉反馈。这种技术方法是一个高回报的机会。据预测，随着精密打孔技术的这些改进，有可能在不改变涡轮机设计的情况下将燃气轮机的效率提高0.5%。这种对细孔制造的精确控制还有许多其他制造应用。

9632042 Kovacevic This GOALI/Graduate Student in Industry award will support two graduate students as they explore gas turbine efficiency improvements made by innovations in fine hole laser drilling. The amount of compressed air needed to cool turbine blades can be reduced with precise and accurate control of size, shape and orientation of the small film cooling holes on the turbine blade. Pratt and Whitney and Control Vision are the industrial collaborators on this award. The graduate students will be in residence at Pratt and Whitney for the experimental work, using a newly developed industrial vision system provided by Control Vision for sensing in the laser drilling process. They will investigate H-infinity adaptive control methods and Mu-synthesis robust control designs for the laser drilling process, using vision feedback of the hole size and shape. This technical approach is a high pay-off opportunity. Predictions are that with these improvements in precision hole making technology it may be possible to improve gas turbine efficiency by 0.5% without changing the turbine design. This precise control of fine hole making has many other manufacturing applications.