General Electric Company

Gerard Anthony Rinck

Hardev Singh

Jonathan Philip Clarke

Brian Alan Norton

Mark Edward Stegemiller

Ching-Pang Lee

Steven Robert Brassfield

John Howard Starkweather

Monty Lee Shelton

Chander Prakash

A gas turbine engine turbine blade includes a hollow airfoil extending radially from a blade root to a radially outer airfoil tip. The airfoil includes an airfoil outer wall having transversely spaced apart pressure and suction side walls meeting along chordally spaced apart leading and trailing edges of the airfoil. A radially extending cooling air supply channel within the airfoil includes a bank of pins integral with and extending transversely between the pressure and suction side walls. The bank of the pins is tuned such that a natural frequency of the blade associated with an engine forced driving mode of the blade is sufficiently away from a steady state engine operating frequency to substantially avoid natural frequency resonance of the blade during steady state engine operation. The bank of the pins is tuned by locations of the pins within the cooling air supply channel.

Turbine blade frequency tuned pin bank

A gas turbine engine includes rotor blades including airfoils that facilitates reducing manufacturing losses due to airfoil trailing edge scarfing. Each airfoil includes a first and second sidewall connected at a leading edge and a trailing edge. The sidewalls define a cooling cavity that includes at least a leading edge chamber bounded by the sidewalls and the airfoil leading edge, and a trailing edge chamber bounded by sidewalls and the airfoil trailing edge. The cooling cavity trailing edge chamber includes a tip region, a throat, and a passageway region connected in flow communication such that the throat is between the tip region and the passageway region. Furthermore, the tip region is bounded by the airfoil tip and extends divergently from the throat, such that a width of the tip region is greater than a width of the throat.

Methods and systems for cooling gas turbine engine airfoils

A turbine blade for a gas turbine engine. An existing blade was found to exhibit bowing, or a concave configuration facing the pressure side, along its trailing edge. The invention reduces bowing by ( ) changing tilt, ( ) changing lean, ( ) reducing the number of cooling holes, while ( ) changing the diameters of the cooling holes, to maintaining the total cooling flow unchanged.

Gas turbine engine blade

A rotor blade for a gas turbine engine including a tip region that facilitates reducing operating temperatures of the rotor blade is described. The tip region includes a first tip wall and a second tip wall extending radially outward from a tip plate of an airfoil. The tip walls extend from adjacent a leading edge of the airfoil to connect at a trailing edge of the airfoil. A notch is defined between the first and second tip walls at the airfoil leading edge. At least a portion of the second tip wall is recessed to define a tip shelf.

Growing community of inventors

Cincinnati, OH, United States of America

Gerard Anthony Rinck