Gas Turbine Compressor Performance Characteristics During Wet Compression - Influence Of Polydisperse Spray

The available literature shows that there exists a lack of understanding about the impact of wet compression, involving two-phase flow, on the physics of flow in the compressor stages of a gas turbine engine. In recent years, analytical models have been proposed which provide effects of wet compression on the overall compressor performance and in few studies on the stage-by-stage performance. In spite of the fact that the wet compression technology for power augmentation has been commercially implemented on numerous gas turbines from all the major gas turbine manufacturers, many issues such as, effects of polydisperse spray, droplets dynamics, influence on the performance characteristics of individual stages, stage and overall surge margin, etc., remain not completely understood. This investigation clearly shows importance of considering effects of polydisperse spray on the overall and stage-by-stage compressor performance characteristics. The presented results show that for a given droplets distribution and ambient condition, later stages of a compressor are prone to reduced surge margin under wet compression process due to redistribution of stage loading. Moreover, the study shows that smaller distributions allow the achievement of higher performance, but the compressor surge is reached with a lower amount of injected water