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

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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.