Multidisciplinary design of turbine disks

Turbine disks are required to operate at a high temperature environment and rotate at high velocity for good propulsive efficiency of the gas turbine engine. They are constantly subjected to large amount of centrifugal and thermal loads. This combination of loads results in thermomechanical stresses, which leads to lower fatigue life of the turbine disk. This report focuses on the study of thermal regulation on turbine disks through new novel designs that will alter the heat transfer coefficients of the disk, and to achieve a reduction in the peak thermal stress encountered by the disk. The design of turbine disks is a multidisciplinary process that includes several disciplines, such as mechanical design, aerodynamics, heat transfer and structural analysis. Analysis of a baseline design shows that the maximum thermal stress experienced by a disk can reach 288.68 MPa. Multiple designs were developed and analysed in this study. Results showed that transient thermal stress level can be reduced by up to 30% in designs where fins were added to the top disk cavity whereas a smaller reduction in stress of up to 1.47% is achieved for designs where fins were added to the bottom disk domain when compared with the existing baseline design. These demonstrated that the effects of heat transfer coefficients on maximum thermal stress are more drastic at the upper region of the disk.Bachelor of Engineering (Aerospace Engineering