Turbine component cooling with closed looped control of coolant flow

摘要

A gas turbine engine has, in flow series, a compressor section, a combustor, and a turbine section. The engine further has a cooling system which diverts a cooling air flow received from the compressor section to a heat exchanger and then to the turbine section to cool a component thereof. The cooling air flow by-passes the combustor and is cooled in the heat exchanger. The cooling system has a valve arrangement which regulates the cooling air flow. The engine further has a closed-loop controller which estimates and/or measures one or more temperatures of the cooled component, compares values derived from the estimated and/or measured temperatures with one or more corresponding targets, and issues a demand signal to the valve arrangement based on the comparison and a value of the demand signal at a previous time step.

主权项

1. A gas turbine engine having, in flow series, a compressor section, a combustor, and a turbine section, and further having:
a cooling system which diverts an air flow received from the compressor section to a heat exchanger and then to the turbine section to cool a component thereof, the air flow by-passing the combustor and being cooled in the heat exchanger, and the cooling system having a valve arrangement which regulates the air flow downstream of the heat exchanger; and a closed-loop controller apparatus operable to control operation of the valve arrangement by sending for a current time step of a series of time steps, a current demand signal, the closed-loop controller comprising: at least one sensor for monitoring a real-time parameter of the component over the series of time steps, a processor for calculating a demand signal at each time step to operate the valve arrangement to control the air flow, a memory for storing one or more most recent demand signals calculated at the most recent in the series of time steps, the processor configured for determining an error between a pre-defined target parameter and the real-time parameter sensed at the current time step and determining the current demand signal to cause the valve arrangement to control the air flow to address the error, wherein the step of determining the current demand signal involves a calculation using, the error and a most recent demand signal of the one or more most recent demand signals stored in the memory of the controller.