General Electric Company

Dennis C Evans

John W Vdoviak

Robert Alexander Nicoll

Roy E Moyer

Robert E Gladden

A turbine assembly includes an annular fairing and strut subassembly which provides mechanical strength to the turbine assembly and support for the rotor aft bearing. A readily demountable annular outlet guide vane assembly is mounted to the aft of the fairing and strut assembly for deswirling the exhaust gasses which exit the turbine assembly. The aft mounting of the outlet guide vanes allows for an axially shorter and lighter turbine engine design which removes greater inlet swirl than prior designs, with equal or less pressure loss.

Turbine engine assembly with aft mounted outlet guide vanes

The turbine blades of a high pressure turbine in a gas turbine jet engine are cooled by cooling air injected into cooling channels in the blade using angled nozzles supplied with high pressure air from the engine compressor. The nozzles project the high pressure air across a lower-pressure gap into slots which lead to internal channels in the turbine disk without requiring the use of seals to produce a pressure differential to encourage the flow of cooling air. Maximum air transfer into the internal channels in the turbine blades occurs when the air impacting slots in the turbine wheel is travelling at an angle with respect to the slots which is approximately parallel to the axes of the internal channels. A relatively narrow range of angular misalignment for aiming the nozzles is permitted. The pressure of the air from the plenum may be reduced by employing two or more flow channels in series before projecting the air across the gap to the turbine wheel.

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Topsfield, MA, United States of America

Dennis C Evans