Aerodynamic design of a gas turbine rotor blade for the KTH test turbine

The purpose of the thesis was to design a new rotor blade for the KTH test turbine according to present design guidelines for gas turbines manufactured at Siemens Industrial Turbomachinery in Finspång. Stage one of a real gas turbine was used as a reference for the aerodynamic design providing a starting point for the project. Using similar gas conditions the new rotor blade was optimized with regard to metal angles and pitch/chord ratio at reference scale. With a satisfying geometry the new blade was scaled back to test turbine size. The blade design could be evaluated and modified using several different in house codes: MAC1, used for meanline design, Beta2 for through flow design, CATO for airfoil design and Multall for 3D design. During the project certain reference specifications restricted the design and had to be considered. ANSYS CFX was used to analyze the final geometry in great detail not possible in any of the other software. The new blade was first analyzed at reference scale and then once again evaluated in Beta2, Multall06 and ANSYS CFX at test turbine scale. As a consequence of generally having low Reynolds number in model tests the results are not entirely comparable with the real case. Effects of transition using different transition models were assessed providing valuable information about the expected difference