AxSTREAM for Turbomachinery Retrofits and Upgrades

Utilities, industrial companies and power producers have been upgrading/retrofitting power plants and major components to extend life and improve performance. One primary area for performance improvement has been the turbine, and this has usually been accomplished by retrofitting turbines and compressors with new rotor systems to incorporate a new, more efficient flow path.

AxSTREAM has been widely recognized and used as a powerful tool for design and optimization of new flow paths. More and more, OEM’s and turbomachinery service/overhaul businesses are looking at AxSTREAM to evaluate and analyze existing turbomachinery flow paths, and then develop new, high efficiency designs with AxSTREAM that can be installed into the existing cylinders with rotors.

AxSTREAM can contribute to turbine and compressor retrofit/upgrade projects in a number of ways:

• Analyze the performance of the existing flow path through easy import of 3D compressor and turbine airfoil geometry.
  
  
• Examine the effects of modification to the flow path (removal of a row of blades, for example).
  
  
• Perform turbomachinery vane and blade design to optimize efficiency, adjust through-flow etc.
  
  
• Calculate/validate effects of cycle modifications in the turbine and compressor, such as boiler capacity increase and changed characteristics of combustor.
  
  
• Conduct off-design point performance analysis through powerful Design of Experiment (DoE) studies.
  
  
• Develop new performance maps.
  
  

AxSTREAM has been used many times to analyze the performance of existing turbomachinery flow path. Through its optimization process, gains in steam turbine performance of 2 to 3 percentage points in efficiency have commonly been realized.

AxSTREAM provides power producers and turbomachinery service companies with the best of both worlds: reaping the benefits of a higher efficiency flow path without having to purchase new rotors.