• Experimental Validation of One-Dimensional Acoustic Modeling Techniques for Gas Turbine Combustors - submitted to Journal of the Acoustic Society of America (JASA), July 2001
• Measurement of Dynamic Flame Response in a Lean Premixed Single Can Combustor - Paper 2001-GT-38 of the International Gas Turbine & Aeroengine Congress, New Orleans, LA , June 4-7
• Control of Combustor Instabilities Using an Artificial Neural Network-Paper No. 2000-GT-0529 - Proceedings the ASME Turbo Expo, Munich, Germany, May, 2000
• An Examination of The Relationship Between Chemiluminescent Light Emissions and Heat Release Rate under Non-Adiabatic Conditions - Proceedings of ASME Turbo Expo, Paper No. 2000-GT-0121, Munich, Germany, May, 2000
• Part I: Laminar Premixed Flame - Proceedings of the American Flame Research Committee International Symposium, Newport Beach, CA, September 2000: Presentation
• Part II: Effects of Fuel Composition - 2nd Joint US Sections of Combustion Institute Meeting, Oakland, CA , March 2001:Presentation
• An Experimental Examination of the Relationship Between Chemiluminescent Light Emission and Heat Release Rate Under Non-Adiabatic Conditions - Proceedings of the RTO/AVT Symposium, Braunschweig, Germany, May 2000
• Diagnostics and Modeling of Acoustic Signatures in a Tube Combustor - Accepted for publication in the Proceedings of the 6th Int. Cong. Of Sound and Vibration, Copenhagen, Denmark, July, 1999

Performing Member Contact:

Danesh Tafti, Associate Professor

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
114 Randolph Hall, Mechanical Engineering Department
Blacksburg, VA 24061
540-231-9975 /FAX 540-231-9100
dtafti@vt.edu

• Virginia Tech's Center for Turbomachinery and Propulsion Research includes faculty from the Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace and Ocean Engineering, and Electrical and Computer Engineering Departments. The Center is actively working on projects concerned with combustion instabilities, turbine aero and heat transfer issues, unsteady stator/rotor interactions, distortion effects in compressor performance, turbine engine noise, analyses methods for controlling performance variability, rotor dynamics, magnetic bearings, and active flow control for reducing high-cycle fatigue.

  The research projects use experimental facilities such as a heated transonic turbine blade cascade with cryogenic cooling to achieve high density ratios between the coolant and hot gas flows, a transonic compressor cascade, a moving wall compressor cascade, and a number of low speed wind tunnels with linear airfoil cascades. Rotor dynamics is studied using various facilities, which include a variable speed motor drive capable of 14,000 rpm for identification of fluid film bearing characteristics. Test rigs for combustion studies include a full scale combustor capable of high pressure combustion. In addition to the facilities mentioned, there is an airport laboratory that houses an operational JT15D-1 turbofan engine that can generate up to 2500 lbf of thrust. Instrumentation used for these studies include laser Doppler velocimeters, hot-wire anemometers, Schlieren systems, pressures probes, fast-responding heat flux sensors, thermal liquid crystals, and infrared thermography. In addition to a number of workstations and PCs, computational facilities include a cluster of 1,100 Apple G5s capable of 10.3 trillion operations per second, which makes the Virginia Tech Terascale Computing Facility the third-fastest machine in the world.