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

这项GOALI/工业研究生奖将支持两名研究生，因为他们将探索通过细孔激光钻孔创新提高燃气轮机效率。通过精确控制涡轮叶片上的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。普惠公司和Control Vision公司是该奖项的工业合作伙伴。研究生们将在普拉特和惠特尼公司进行实验工作，使用由Control vision公司提供的新开发的工业视觉系统来检测激光钻孔过程。他们将利用孔尺寸和形状的视觉反馈，研究激光钻孔过程的h∞自适应控制方法和mu合成鲁棒控制设计。这种技术方法是一个高回报的机会。据预测，随着精密制孔技术的这些改进，在不改变涡轮设计的情况下，燃气轮机效率有可能提高0.5%。这种精细孔制造的精确控制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.