HPC4mfg – Surface Roughness Effects from Additive Manufacturing in High Efficiency Gas Turbine Combustion Systems

Project Description

Additive manufacturing has been increasingly adopted by gas turbine manufacturers for rapid prototyping and mass production of complex, light-weight parts for combustion systems. However, the additive manufacturing process typically results in higher surface
roughness compared to conventional manufacturing. Surface roughness effect, which is difficult to be efficiently modeled with high accuracy, results in performance difference between drawing board concepts and as-built parts, which poses challenges on combustion system efficiency improvement and manufacturing cost reduction. Today, engine flow simulation boundary conditions are not well quantified in terms of surface roughness, which is either ignored or empirically estimated based on manufacturing
material and surface treatment process. We will use efficient integral wall modeled LES and surface reconstruction with X-ray computed tomography to model surface roughness effect in high efficiency combustion systems. This project is expected to fundamentally advance the design methodology of additive manufacturing products with significant energy savings.