Session: 08-02 Education Issues II

Paper Number: 82814

82814 - Interactive Learning Platform for the Preliminary Design of Axial Turbines and Its Use for Graduate Courses 

The gas turbine industry requires from its employees an extensive knowledge in several areas of engineering, e.g. aerothermodynamics, heat transfer, mechanical design, and vibration analysis, and since both industry and academy continuously develop new approaches, technologies, and models, usually, there is not enough time to cover all the relevant subjects in one or two-semester courses for undergraduate or graduate students. In previous work, the authors have presented an interactive platform for the preliminary design of single-stage axial turbines with uncooled blades, for use at the undergraduate courses offered by the Turbomachine Department at Aeronautics Institute of Technology to accelerate the learning process. The present work aims to present an expansion of this interactive learning platform for the preliminary design of multistage axial turbines, with the inclusion of a module for the thermodynamic cycle study, a module for off-design calculations, options for constant inner, mean or outer diameter, and the generation of a PDF file containing the step-by-step solution memorial with all the equations and values used in the design. The loss models available for the off-design module are the Ainley and Mathieson’s model and the Moustapha, Kacker and Tremblay’s and the Benner, Sjolander and Moustapha’s corrections for the Kacker and Okappuu’s model. The work also presents a structure for the conduction of a graduate course in turbomachines focused on the design of axial turbines. It comprehends theory and exercise classes, oriented study with the interactive learning platform to provide some sensibility about the effects of each decision in the final design, and a project in which the students have to reimplement some of the modules and run test cases. The authors observed more interest of the students and higher quality questions in the classes using the interactive platform or programming into it, developing a better understanding of the design process until the end of the course. Also, while, in previous semesters, the preliminary design occupied almost half of the 48-hour or 16-week course, it took only 12-hour or 4-week to cover the same subject, granting time to other more complex ones, e.g. blade cooling and CFD simulations.

Presenting Author: George Silva ITA - Aeronautics Institute of Technology

Presenting Author Biography: Ph.D. student in Aeronautical and Mechanical Engineering at the Aeronautics Institute of Technology (ITA), he graduated in Mechanical Engineering at the Universidade Federal de Itajubá (UNIFEI) in 2018. Currently, his research focuses on the parallelization of CFD codes for compressible flows using the finite volume method and on the turbomachinery design for aeronautical purposes.

Authors:

George Silva ITA - Aeronautics Institute of Technology
Jesuino Takachi Tomita ITA - Aeronautics Institute of Technology
Cleverson Bringhenti ITA - Aeronautics Institute of Technology
Luiz Whitacker ITA - Aeronautics Institute of Technology
Daniel da Silva Tonon ITA - Aeronautics Institute of Technology