Award

Gas Turbines (GTs) for piloted aircraft and drones are among the most complicated components in a flight program, and the most challenging part of a system to design. The state-of-the-art is such that while current tools can design turbomachinery primary flow paths expeditiously and accurately, incorporating secondary flow systems and cooling schemes lead to long design and development cycle times. This SBIR effort will mean the introduction of state-of-the art methods for the design, layout, and analysis of turbomachinery secondary flows. Concepts NREC has a pre-existing fundamental design system that has many of the needed modifications/additions in place; what is missing is an appropriate integration of the disparate elements In addition to the development of SFS flow path geometry generation utility with 1D network solver capability, we intend to link new and successful existing solvers together into a comprehensive design system, taking full account of secondary flow effects. The mature state of the already-existing component products will provide a strong foundation and minimize the risk involved in a straight to Phase II program. á