MECHANICAL SOLUTIONS INC — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: A16-073

Description

Prevention of blade failure in gas turbine propulsion accounts for a significant percentage of the development and operational costs of a gas turbine engine.Decreased availability for the warfighter, shortened time between overhauls, and increased need for spares are all associated with premature compressor and turbine blade failures.In this project, MSI proposes to provide an upgrade to the AGT1500 engine by developing a microwave measurement system that accurately detects the blade response from surge and stall, producing an actionable signal for the control system.Using a single robust sensor, and focused exclusively on the vibration modes of interest, a compact robust real-time measurement system will be developed, thereby allowing the control system to prevent rotating stall to progress to a damaging surge.The key feature of the proposed MSI system is a microwave sensor that is installed in the casing over the blade tips (similar to a tip clearance or tip timing probe).The microwave sensor was originally developed to supplement tip timing systems because its wide field of view allows a calculation of the full blade response spectrum, which otherwise requires a large number of tip timing probes.For this application, the measurement system can be simplified significantly.