Volume 11, Issue 5, 2002

D.E. Vlachos¹, Y.Z. Pappas¹, Marco Innocenti² and V.Kostopoulos¹,*

¹Applied Mechanics Laboratory, University of Patras and ICE-HT/FORTH, GR-26500 Patras, Greece
²Nuovo Pignone S.A., Via F.Matteucci 2, 50127 Florence, Italy

ABSTRACT

Continuous Fibre Ceramic (Matrix) Composites (CFCCs) have found during the last decade numerousof industrial applications in a variety of technological areas, where structural components are subjected to high temperature combined with significant mechanical loading. The present work deals with the application of an innovative design methodology for the development of an industrial gas turbine combustor chamber made of oxide/oxide composite materials. Oxide/oxide composites offer high-temperature structural stability without the need of any kind of oxidation protection and thus permit the increase of working temperature of the gas turbine, increasing the efficiency of the system and decreasing NOx emissions. Since, oxide/oxide composites degrade their structural properties as a function of the operating temperature (for temperature higher than 1000o C) and the exposure time, an incremental approach has been introduced as a structural design methodology for the combustion chamber, where each increment represents a thermal exposure stage. The data set required for the application of the present design approach, was obtained through an extensive material characterization program based on the measurement of the anisotropic properties of oxide/oxide composites using ultrasonic techniques.