Russian-made Gas Turbine Production Moves Step Closer

With the goal of creating completely domestic gas turbines, Russia’s Power Machines said it has completed the first stage of development work on the design of a new flow path for the GTE-65.1 gas turbine.

The analysis of the basic design of the GTE-65.0 sample manufactured by Power Machines, by the order of the company, was carried out by the OKB im. A. Lyulki (branch of PJSC UEC-UMPO).

On the basis of this analysis, the OKB specialists formulated a concept for the modernization of the turbine flow path. The concept is already being implemented, namely, new gas-dynamic surfaces of the working and guide blades of the GT-65.1 turbine have been developed. Changing the blade profiles should lead to an increase in the efficiency of the turbine flow path to achieve the target parameters of the GTE-65.1 project.

At the next stage, which will be completed by the end of 2020, a project for a new blade cooling system will be developed. In 2021, it is planned to release a pilot batch of first-stage blades for testing at the stand of NPO CKTI named after I. I.I. Polzunov. The blades will be manufactured using additive technologies – 3D printed, which is a new experience for Power Machines.

Power Machines started developing a domestic line of power gas turbines of two standard sizes – GTE-65 and GTE-170 – in 2018. Since then, a design bureau has been created, design documentation has been developed, design work is underway.

The first turbine GTE-170 was put into production, the revision of GTE-65 was completed, which was previously manufactured, but its tests were not completed. The production of gas turbines GTE-65 and GTE-170 is deployed at LMZ. This is complementary to the technological operations that the plant has historically done. The production is being retrofitted with equipment for opening up bottlenecks. The plant has its own experimental and research base for testing full-size units of combustion chambers of power gas turbine plants on full-scale parameters.

The R&D plan is being implemented with the participation of the country’s leading research enterprises, the company said. Re-equipment of production is underway, active work with suppliers is underway. In 2019, Power Machines won the competition of the Ministry of Industry and Trade of Russia for R&D subsidies for this project.