Bons Awarded Grant To Conduct Advanced Turbine Technology Study

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As reported in onCampus, Aerospace Engineering Professor Jeffrey Bons is participating in a research project that was awarded a $500,000 grant from the US Department of Energy to conduct advanced turbine technology studies under the Office of Fossil Energy's University Turbine Systems Research Program. The funds are shared with the University of North Dakota, the principal investigator on the grant. 

According to a Fossil Energy Techline report, "This research will develop the heat transfer and deposition predictive tools and surface protective cooling technologies which allow for the reliable design of leading edge cooling schemes in a syngas environment. This research is important since it has been found that cooling the leading edge of a first stage of a modern gas turbine offers considerable challenges due to an aggressive heat transfer environment and a very modest pressure difference for cooling."

Bons and his colleagues at the University of North Dakota will study the performance of "three different experimental rigs to investigate: the effects of leading edge diameters on stagnation region deposition rates and heat transfer augmentation under a variety of conditions; the effectiveness levels for film cooling geometries on both smooth and rough surfaces; and new internal cooling methods which may be able to accommodate stagnation region heat loads at the aggressive inlet temperatures of modern gas turbines."

Category: Faculty