Improving the Efficiency of the Trent 500-HP Turbine Using Nonaxisymmetric End Walls—Part I: Turbine Design

This paper describes the redesign of the HP turbine of the Rolls-Royce Trent 500 engine, making use of nonaxisymmetric end walls. The original, datum turbine used conventional axisymmetric end walls, while the vane and (shrouded) rotor aerofoil profiles were nominally the same for the two designs. Previous research on the large-scale, low-speed linear cascade at Durham University (see Hartland et al., 1998, “Non-Axisymmetric End Wall Profiling in a Turbine Cascade,” ASME 98–GT-525), had already demonstrated significant potential for reducing turbine secondary losses using nonaxisymmetric end walls-by about one third. This paper shows how a methodology was derived from the results of this research and applied to the design of the single-stage Trent 500-HP turbine (model rig). In particular, the application of a new linear design system for the parametric definition of these end wall shapes (described in Harvey et al., 1999, “Non-Axisymmetric Turbine End Wall Design: Part I Three-Dimensional Linear Design System,” ASME 99–GT-337) is discussed in detail.