Category: Machine Type

Micro Turbines in Maritime Transportation

Posted by Daniel Green

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Hello! Or should I say, welcome aboard! In this edition of micro gas turbines in transportation, we’re going to be looking at micro gas turbines in the marine world. Marine transportation presents its own set of unique challenges not seen in other forms of transportation; although some of the common challenges and hurdles will be seen here too. If you haven’t read the other entries, or the introduction, I highly recommend you do so here.

Out of all the different vehicles and forms of transportation that will be covered in this series, the boat as we know it is one of the oldest ways of getting about. From rowing to sailing to paddle wheels and engines, the boat has a long history of carrying every kind of good and being imaginable. Much like the topic of turbines, marine transportation can take up oceans of information; in fact you might say that it’s a whale of a topic.

Whale Whale Whale
Whale, here we are with another pun. I hope it brightens your day at least! Image courtesy of The Georgia Aquarium

This blog will specifically cover a brief history of motorized marine transportation, where/how micro turbines can be used, and the inherent advantages and disadvantages. Let’s get started!

A Brief History of Engines in Marine Transportation

Steamboats became popular in the 19th Century when the Industrial Revolution was in its early stages. Steam engines like the ones designed by James Watt were used to propel everything from small riverboats like the ones that went up and down the Missouri river, to oceangoing steamships. The engines typically drove a propeller or “screw” or a large paddle wheel like what is commonly seen on a watermill. Different steam engines in different configurations dominated marine transportation throughout the 19th century, and by the turn of the 20th century, large expansion engines began to be utilized for oceangoing ships like the Olympic-class ocean liners as well as warships. Read More

Turbomachinery System and Component Training: Something for Everyone!

Posted by Daniel Green

Mechanical engineering is an ever-changing field, and we want to be there to help engineers stay ahead of the curve, even while they are flattening it. In that spirit, we wanted to share with you our different training options that are available now. Whether you are looking to brush up on the fundamentals, or evaluate a software platform, this is a great time to train and explore the latest and greatest in turbomachinery engineering.

Without further ado, let’s get into it!

Private Corporate Trainings Online

First and foremost, the best most comprehensive training you can get from SoftInWay is a private session with one of SoftInWay’s lead engineers and your team. Why is this the best training option? A couple of reasons:

  • Courses are entirely customizable: The scope of these private training courses is tailored to your specific needs. Are you looking to learn the fundamentals? Or perhaps you want to expand your team’s R&D capabilities when it comes to turbomachinery, rotor dynamics, and 1D thermal systems? Whatever the application, we’ll work with you to develop a course curriculum which brings the most value to you and your team.
  • One-on-one consultation with our expert engineers on individual projects and challenges. Our engineering expertise ranges from flowpath design on a turbomachine, to rotor dynamics, as well as secondary flows/multiphase flows, and other all-encompassing projects such as liquid rocket engine design.
  • ll registrants get a 1-month license of the relevant AxSTREAM modules. During the class, users will be familiarized with the ins and outs of AxSTREAM, and be able to make use of AxSTREAM’s capabilities for 1 month afterwards.

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The class can be as long or as short as you need and scheduled around you and your team. Read More

An Introduction to Shock Waves

Posted by James Rushbrooke

When you think of shock waves, I would wager that you picture a supersonic jet zooming past overhead. Or maybe you have experienced the famous (or infamous) “sonic boom” that accompanies shock waves attached to airplane engines. The engineering challenges associated with the often-troublesome behavior of shock waves is present in all scales, from carefully designing the bodywork of the aforementioned fighter jets, to the equally intricate details of flow passages and blade design in turbomachinery. The first step in taking into account the effect of shock waves is to understand what they are. In this post we will be reviewing a short introduction into what shock waves are and a few applications where they might be relevant.

Figure 1: Schlieren image showing the shock waves of a supersonic jet
Figure 1: Schlieren image showing the shock waves of a supersonic jet. Source

What are shock waves?

Shockwaves are non-isentropic pressure perturbations of finite amplitude and from the second law of thermodynamics we can say that shockwaves only form when the Mach number of the flow is larger than 1. We can distinguish between normal shocks and oblique shocks. In normal shocks, total temperature is constant across the shock, total pressure decreases and static temperature and pressure both increase. Across oblique shocks, flow direction changes in addition to pressure rise and velocity decrease. Read More

Cooling Methods in Turbine Blades

Posted by James Rushbrooke

Turbine components are placed right after the combustor and are therefore, subject to the highest temperatures in an engine. The turbine blades are directly in the line of fire (so to speak) of these incredibly high temperatures. Higher temperatures yield higher cycle efficiencies, meaning that the limit on efficiency for a cycle is determined by turbine materials. The current state of the art materials can only give so much heat resistance capacity, which makes blade cooling essential. In this post we’ll be taking a look at the various cooling methods that exist for turbine blades, and the tools to design them.

Figure 1: High pressure turbine guide vane with cooling holes
Figure 1: High pressure turbine guide vane with cooling holes. Source

How important is cooling to the efficiency of gas turbine engines?

In a word, very.  Let’s look at an example to better explain.  Our fictitious engine without cooling has an overall pressure ratio of 40 where the maximum allowable turbine entry temperature (TET) is at 1498 K, yielding a thermal efficiency of 33%. When compared to a turbine with cooling, TET can be increased to 1850 K, yielding a thermal efficiency of 38%. This is an 8% increase in efficiency via the addition of cooling. In order to achieve good thermal efficiency in our cycles, turbine components must be cooled!

Read More

Modeling Bearings and Support Structures In A Rotor Bearing System

Posted by Daniel Green

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Hello and welcome to the latest revolution in our series on rotor dynamics and bearing analysis. This month, we’ll be looking at the importance and procedure of modeling the bearings and structural supports in a rotortrain.  If you haven’t had a look at the other entries in this series, you can find them here: Series Preface

  1. What is Rotor Dynamics? And Where is it Found?
  2. Why is Rotor Dynamics so Important?
  3. What API Standards Govern Rotor Dynamics Analysis?
  4. Basic Definitions and Fundamental Concepts of Rotating Equipment Vibrations
  5. The Purposes and Objectives of Rotor Dynamics Analyses
  6. The Importance of Accurately Modeling a Rotor-Bearing System­

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So let’s get started, one of the first things a rotor bearing system needs aside from a rotor, is, well, bearings! But what are bearings? I’m glad you asked!

Bearings are mechanical components used to restrict the motion of the machine and support the load while protecting other elements by reducing friction between moving parts. In fact, you might even say it bears the loads (axial and/or radial) caused by a rotor.

Couldn’t resist. I promise this will be the first and only bear pun. Image courtesy of The Guardian

Bearings come in different materials, shapes and styles depending on their application, and can be found in everything from turbomachinery to reciprocating engines to things like hard drives and even fidget spinners. But what are the bearings commonly encountered in turbomachinery, and what effects can they have on the machines they are used in? Read More

Micro Gas Turbines in the Aerospace Industry

Posted by Daniel Green

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Hello and welcome to the next entry in our series on micro gas turbines! If you’re new to this series, be sure to check out our earlier blog where we: introduce the concept of the micro gas turbine; look into the history of it; and discuss some advantages and disadvantages that come with this technology.

This time, we’ll be looking at micro gas turbines in the Aviation industry (if you couldn’t guess by the title). Believe it or not, the concept and configuration of a micro gas turbine has been present in this industry for decades. We’ll get into that in a minute.

Gas turbines are certainly no stranger to the aviation industry. As a matter of fact, when many of us hear the term “gas turbine” we immediately jump to the image of a jet engine powering a massive airliner carrying us to our next adventure.

Engine of airplane
The Mighty Turbofan Engine; Brought about with thanks to Sir Frank Whittle!

Yes, these mighty turbines are indeed a staple in the aerospace industry.  But did you know that micro gas turbines are also making a rise in this industry?

Although micro gas turbines first made an appearance as an alternative to traditional piston engines in the automotive industry, they have actually been present in the aviation industry for some time.

Read More

The Importance of Accurately Modeling a Rotor-Bearing System

Posted by Daniel Green

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Hello and welcome to the latest revolution in our series on rotor dynamics and bearing analysis. This month, we’ll be looking at what steps need to be taken to accurately model a rotor train, from the components on the rotors themselves to the bearings and structural components that support the entire machine. If you haven’t had a look at the other entries in this series, you can find them here: Series Preface

  1. What is Rotor Dynamics? And Where is it Found?
  2. Why is Rotor Dynamics so Important?
  3. What API Standards Govern Rotor Dynamics Analysis?
  4. Basic Definitions and Fundamental Concepts of Rotating Equipment Vibrations
  5. The Purposes and Objectives of Rotor Dynamics Analyses

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So what is the importance of accurately modeling a rotor-bearing system? Well we already know that an inaccurate analysis can have catastrophic consequences… If you want to know more about why, I also suggest looking at entry 2, titled “Why is Rotor Dynamics so Important?”.

Read More

Basics of Steam Turbine Design

Posted by James Rushbrooke

Steam turbines account for more than half of the world’s electricity production in power plants around the world and will continue to be the dominant force in electricity power generation for the foreseeable future. The enhancement of steam turbine efficiency is increasingly important as the urgency to reduce CO2 emissions into the atmosphere is a problem at the forefront of power production. Increasing efficiency in steam turbines, and other components of power plants, will help meet the growing demands for electricity worldwide while reducing harmful greenhouse emissions.

Figure 1 Steam Turbine with Long Last-Stage Blades
Figure 1. Steam Turbine with Long Last-Stage Blades. Source

Steam turbines are used in coal-fired, nuclear, geothermal, natural gas-fired, and solar thermal power plants. Also steam turbines are increasingly needed to stabilize fluctuating power demands from solar and wind power stations as renewable energy sources grow worldwide. The current emphasis on steam turbine development is for increasing efficiency, mainly by increasing steam turbine capacity, as well as increasing operational availability, which translates to rapid start up and shut down procedures.  Read More

Would you Hire an AI Computer Program instead of a Contractor / Employee?

Posted by Valentine Moroz

I was sitting in a meeting with a customer this morning, and a thought kept running through my head: why aren’t more people outsourcing work to computer programs in our industry?

The turbomachinery industry has no shortage of brilliant PhD-level engineers who have a million correct reasons to explain why solving complex flow issues is so complicated; but have they considered how utilizing artificial intelligence may be able to lighten the load?

Our task this morning was to help a customer who is developing an innovative piece of turbomachinery for waste heat recovery as well as their end-customer who will have the pilot machine installed. Our role during the call felt akin to the role of an application engineer; meaning that we did not have to do a complex design on the fly. Instead we answered complex questions about a set of data which we know and have pre-calculated.

It seems that opportunities for leveraging Artificial Intelligence are all around us and are becoming mainstream, but are not as widely used in our industry as if feel they could be, and still seen as an R&D pipe dream rather than a commercial and business engine.

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It has been about a year since we at SoftInWay started seriously developing and using our AI engine AxSTREAM.AI; it was driven by 3 needs:

1. With a size of 85-90 people and a customer rate growing at about 20-30% a year, how can we offer increasingly better engineering services faster, without sacrificing quality or cost-effectiveness?

2. How can we support the Sales team properly in preparing proposals and engineering concepts without having to use un-billable engineering time?

3. How do we help our external customers who have “one-off" projects to complete them efficiently and NOT have to pay for permanent in-house employee or external consultant rates to do work.

Coming from math/finance background the answer was always simple in my mind: train an AI program to do the work so that our team is maximizing their time thinking about new ideas, and everything that was done before in design and application engineering can be in one way or another reflected in a training network or methodology.

I feel that this can be helpful to large companies trying to capitalize of years of historical experience and counter the losses of workforce turnover due to age, as well as startups that don’t have the budget to hire a full engineering team, or the internal skillset to do all of the work.

Do you agree or disagree?

If this sounds like a familiar problem to you, it might be time to consider “hiring” AxSTREAM.AI to tackle your project before things get “supercritical”. Let me know via private message or email: Valentine@softinway.com

The Life of Frank Whittle and His Massive Contribution to Turbomachinery

Posted by Daniel Green

While we at SoftInWay are known for helpful articles about designing various machines and answering questions about the pros and cons of retrofitting your turbomachinery and powerplants, we believe it is important to also examine the lives of some of the men and women behind these great machines that do so much for the world.

Frank Whittle - Image Courtesy of The Telegraph
Frank Whittle – Image Courtesy of The Telegraph

The jet engine is one of the greatest inventions of the last 100 years. It has made transcontinental travel considerably shorter. A trip that might take days on a piston driven aircraft was cut down to hours thanks to the inception of the jet engine. To this day, millions of people rely on jet engines daily for everything from themselves for vacation travel to their packages for shipping goods overnight. These engines also give the U.S. military the ability to deploy to any part of the world within 18 hours.

But who invented the jet engine? This credit changes depending on who you ask.  Some might answer it was Hans von Ohain.  To others, this credit belongs to Sir Frank Whittle, OM, KBE, CB, FRS, FRAeS, RAF.

Why the discrepancy? von Ohain is known for creating the world’s first operational jet engine, and Whittle is credited with developing the turbojet earlier. While von Ohain’s first engine was the first to fly operationally in 1939, Sir Frank Whittle had been working on his design since the 1920’s. Today, we’d like to look at the life of Sir Frank Whittle, and how he created this world-changing machine. Read More