General Electric Company

Robert Randolph Berry

Gene David Palmer

Ian David Wilson

Mark Samuel Bailey

Emilio Fernandez

Mark Dean Pezzutti

Dennis Paul Dry

John Zhiqiang Wang

Jere Allen Johnson, Jr

James Christopher Monaghan

John Paul Urban

Alan R Gilchrist

Hui Kuang

Ron Souther

Pat Mohr

Edward M Duran

A fuel nozzle assembly for a gas turbine includes a plurality of circumferentially spaced vanes with holes for flowing fuel from plenums within the vanes through holes in the vane walls for premixing with air. To tune the nozzle assembly, the holes are resized by reforming the existing holes to a predetermined hole size, securing plugs into the holes, and forming holes through at least certain of the plugs to diameters less than the diameter of the existing holes.

Methods for tuning fuel injection assemblies for a gas turbine fuel nozzle

A bucket tip shroud in a gas turbine includes a seal rail having a cutter tooth at one end. Bucket tip shroud creep rate can be reduced by removing the cutter tooth from the bucket tip shroud seal rail after use or with a pre-groove honeycomb shroud. Preferably, the remaining geometry matches a geometry of the seal rail within a predetermined tolerance.

Gas turbine and method for reducing bucket tip shroud creep rate

A tip cap for a turbine blade. The tip cap may include a HS-188 sheet material with a thickness of less than about 0.079 inches (about 2 millimeters) and a number of holes positioned in the sheet material.

Gas turbine bucket tip cap

Dovetail-shaped grooves are formed in the axial faces and circumferential rims of wheels and spacers forming a rotor body. Complementary-shaped balance weights are inserted through entry apertures in the grooves and circumferentially aligned into adjusted balanced positions. Fasteners are threaded through the weights to engage in slots at circumferentially spaced positions along ribs projecting from the bases of the grooves. By threading the fastener into the slot and staking the fastener to the balance weight, the metal of the rotary component is not upset or deformed, with the result that the potential for development of cracks in the rotary component is substantially reduced.

Apparatus and methods for balancing turbine rotors

A method of stacking a plurality of wheels and spacers forming a rotor for a turbine, the wheels and spacers having a plurality of circumferentially spaced, axially extending openings spaced radially from axes of the wheels and spacers including providing a support fixture having an axis and disposing a plurality of alignment rods about the fixture in circumferentially spaced relation to one another about and generally parallel to the axis. Each of the rods has a cross-section with a radial dimension less than a circumferential dimension. The method includes disposing the wheels and spacers on the support fixture with the alignment rods extending through the openings with clearances between the rods and margins of the openings being greater in a radial direction than in a circumferential direction.

Methods for aligning holes through wheels and spacers and stacking the wheels and spacers to form a turbine rotor

A gas turbine rotor stacking fixture includes upstanding bolts for reception in aligned bolt holes in superposed aft disk, wheels and spacers and upstanding alignment rods received in openings of the disk, wheels and spacers during the rotor stacking assembly. The axially registering openings enable insertion of thin-walled tubes circumferentially about the rim of the rotor, with tight tolerances to the openings to provide supply and return steam for cooling buckets. The alignment rods have radial dimensions substantially less than their dimensions in a circumferential direction to allow for radial opening misalignment due to thermal expansion, tolerance stack-up and wheel-to-spacer mismatch due to rabbet mechanical growth. The circumferential dimension of the alignment rods affords tightly toleranced alignment of the openings through which the cooling tubes are installed.

Apparatus and methods for aligning holes through wheels and spacers and

The present invention provides a rotor blade capable of being axially loaded in slots on a gas turbine engine rotor and particularly suited for use on turbine disks. The blade has a generally axially extending dovetail root which is effective for being loaded into a rotor disk slot between adjacent disk posts. Anti-rock tangs are disposed radially outward of the root and tangentially extend from the shank and are generally linear in the axial direction. The anti-rock tangs are effective to engage the radially outwardmost facing surfaces of the adjacent dovetail posts between which is disposed the associated dovetail slot.

Growing community of inventors

Greenville, SC, United States of America

Robert Randolph Berry