Cooled turbine cantilevered nozzle mounting and sealing system

Small advanced turboprop and turboshaft engines, with two-stage high-pressure turbine (HPT), need to meet several challenges. Described herein is an exemplary solution adopted for a cantilevered HPT nozzle mounting and sealing system that helped to meet requirements for size constraint and sealing of split lines and mounting features. Since clearances do not scale down with engine size due to manufacturing tolerances, there is a very limited space available between first and second stage rotors to secure HPT nozzle and to provide means of cooling air supply. Due to small diameters, cavities and size of the parts and assembly access becomes very difficult and precluded the use of typical solutions – like supply air spooilers – known from bigger engines. Relatively larger clearances require also efficient solution for sealing leakage, which was achieved by means of high-temperature braided “rope seals”. The nozzle segments have weight effective hook-type outer band mounting to HPT outer casing and are axially retained by HPT shroud with a snap ring. The hook cavities were used as pockets for rope seals that are subsequently compressed during assembly making it more difficult. However, by special design of the pockets and parts engagement sequence, the assembly process was optimized even though it is so called blind assembly. The sealing system function is not only reducing leakages that are detrimental to a turbine efficiency, but also allow for pressurizing the cavity between the nozzle outer band and HPT outer casing with cooling air thus preventing from hot gas ingestion by higher back-flow margin (BFM) resulting in higher durability of the turbine.

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Opracowanie rekordu w ramach umowy 509/P-DUN/2018 ze środków MNiSW przeznaczonych na działalność upowszechniającą naukę (2019).