General Electric Company

Philip Francis Stec

Richard Ludwig Schmidt

Daniel Edward Demers

A turbine blade squealer tip has a continuous squealer tip wall extending radially outwardly from and continuously around a tip cap. A recessed tip wall portion of the tip wall is recessed inboard from a pressure side of an airfoil outer wall of an airfoil of the blade forming a tip shelf therebetween. A plurality of film cooling shelf holes are disposed through the tip shelf to an internal cooling circuit of the blade and are spaced away from a junction between the recessed tip wall portion and the tip shelf. The exemplary embodiment of the airfoil includes shelf hole centerlines of the holes passing through pierce points in the shelf. At least a majority of the shelf hole centerlines are angled in outboard directions away from and outboard of the squealer tip wall. A majority of centerlines are angled away from vertical lines passing through the pierce points at first component angles in a range between 2 degrees and 16 degrees.

Turbine blade with recessed squealer tip and shelf

A turbine blade damper in the form of a sheet metal body includes a concave notch along one edge thereof, and a projecting side tab along an opposite edge thereof.

Self retaining blade damper

An improved, highly stable blade-to-blade vibration damper configuration which provides substantially continuous blade vibration damping and sealing of an interplatform gap due to positional stability thereof. Disposed in a subplatform cavity, the damper is comprised of a generally triangular shaped body having a vertex thereof aligned with the interplatform gap. A primary damper load face abuts a first inclined platform load face and a secondary damper load face abuts a second inclined platform load face. Maintenance of sliding planar contact between primary and first load faces and sliding linear contact between secondary and second load faces is afforded by orienting inclined platform faces to have an included angle greater than that of the damper vertex and offsetting a damper center of gravity toward the primary load face. The damper may include one or more legs to orient the damper in the cavity and one or more extending tabs to discourage hot gas flow thereby. In a preferred embodiment, the damper is utilized as an as-cast member, without the need for additional processing or machining, and the vertex included angle is greater than about 90 degrees.

Stable blade vibration damper for gas turbine engine

An improved seal apparatus is disclosed in which the distal ends of compliant bristle elements of a conventional brush seal are disposed in a groove in adjacent structure, further being characterized by lack of contact between the bristles and structure during steady state operation of the apparatus in which the seal is installed. Sealing is afforded by the tortuosity of the leakage path. Degradation of the seal due to wear of the bristles is markedly reduced. Multiple seals in one or more constant dimension or stepped dimension grooves is also contemplated.

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Medford, MA, United States of America

Philip Francis Stec