My Dad was in the Royal Air Force. He flew Vulcans in the late 50's. I think this is where my fascination with turbines came from - particularly gas turbines.
I used to stand at the end of the runway with these things thundering overhead.
DIY Turbocharger based gas turbine (aka DTT)
I always wanted to have a turbine of some sort, but it wasn't until I went to college and saw the Cussons educational turbine rig that I realised that one could be made without having to make the difficult bits, like the compressor and turbine, by using an automotive turbocharger.
So I set about collecting bits. This took along time. What really lit the fire was finding Kalle's DTT website.
(Place the cursor over the image for a description)
The rig consists of a frame made of 25mm steel angle gas welded together. I don't actually have any welding gear, I went to evening classes to do this bit.
These views shows the frame, on the left is the with the original combustion chamber and turbocharger. The right hand image is the current (3/98) assembly. The most noticeable difference is the combustion chamber.
LONG descriptions of the individual parts follow, and also parts that have been modified and added during development. The aim of the current development is to produce a basically 'turnkey' gas turbine 'gas generator', albeit a very inefficient one, and then to work from that base to see how far it can be developed in terms of automatic control and optimisation of ancillaries (i.e. pumps, starters etc.), and to increase the overall efficiency by using the 'waste' exhaust gas for heat recuperation, and to develop mechanical power.
Well, that is the plan, but in reality, wouldn't it be infinitely more fun to harness the high energy exhaust gas by accelerating it in a nozzle, and fit the whole mess to say, a wheelchair ?
The turbine system consists of:
The Combustion Chamber. (There are some details of combustor design, since this seems to be a common question.)
