Gas dynamic simulation of shockless explosion combustion for gas turbine power cycles

Abstract

With the ongoing stagnation of the progress towards higher efficiency gas turbines, alternative approaches in combustion receive more attention than ever before. Besides, increasing efficiency and reducing emissions at the same time has become a first priority of the industry in the last few decades. Constant volume combustion is considered a technology capable of achieving a significant increase in thermal efficiency when applied in gas turbines. In this work, models of gas turbine cycles with two different combustion methods, being a shockless explosion combustion and an isobaric homogeneous combustion, will be simulated and compared. A code based on the one dimensional Euler equations is utilized to calculate the exhaust gas outlet parameters of the shockless explosion combustion chamber, while taking into account all the gas dynamic phenomena in it. The efficiency of the turbine is computed by steady state operational maps. The simulations provide numerous detailed results with a focus on the dependency of the SEC cycle’s thermal efficiency to the compressor pressure ratio and the turbine inlet temperature. Evaluating the kinetic energy in the total enthalpy of the turbine inlet flow is also an essential investigation.