Integration of finite element analysis for lifing in a design and analysis platform for gas turbines

Abstract

Gas turbine design is a multifaceted process that requires designing many disciplines as aerothermal, performance, Secondary Air System (SAS), Finite Element Analysis (FEA) and lifing. Working in multi-expertise fields requires non-value-added tasks such as data transmission between software or data management but also tedious tasks among pre-processing, processing and post-processing especially repetitive and similar which requires valuable time. The objective of the Design and Analysis (D&A) platform is to regroup all disciplines using multiple gas turbine software and integrated them into a Multidisciplinary Design Optimization (MDO) context through automation. This thesis presents the integration of Finite Element Analysis (FEA) tool for lifing into a Design and Analysis (D&A) platform. An automated tool has been deployed integrating finite element software used at Siemens, SC03, that solves the structural, thermal and thermo-mechanical gas turbine model. This platform is designed and tested for Mechanical Integrity (MI) and Whole Engine Thermal Modelling (WETM) engineers. Both need different data from the FEA, so a workflow has been created that allows the user to pre-process, process and postprocess FEA. Implementation of this workflow was made possible with this platform thanks to automation. The tool created in the digital platform includes the analysis automation for the whole engine thermal model (WETM). The user can generate a huge amount of inputs of engine cycle definition, namely the Basic Design Data (BDD) and the results of numerical simulation analyses namely the Finite Element Model (FEM), for different engines configurations. After the analysis is done, a step of extraction of values will occur to facilitate the post-processing. For that, a user interface is displayed, and stakeholders can choose the quantities needed such as displacements, stresses, temperatures. This multidisciplinary application and platform aim to reduce design cycle time and cost while at the same time improving design process quality and robustness.

Date	25 Jun 2020
Original language	American English
Awarding Institution	École de technologie supérieure
Supervisor	Saïd Hany Moustapha (Supervisor) & François Garnier (Co-supervisor)