Variable flowpath casings for blade tip clearance control
AssigneeGeneral Electric Company
InventorsRaghuveer Chinta, Abhijit Roy, Vaishnav Raghuvaran, Srinivas Nuthi, Ravindra Shankar Ganiger
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Disclosed herein are example variable flow path casings for blade tip clearance control. An example casing for a turbine engine includes a first annular substrate extending along an axial direction; a second annular substrate positioned radially inward relative to the first annular substrate, the second annular substrate movably coupled to the first annular substrate; and an actuator coupled to the second annular substrate such that a force applied by the actuator moves the second annular substrate relative to the first annular substrate to adjust a tip clearance.
Claims20
An apparatus to control a tip clearance of a turbine engine, the apparatus comprising:
- an actuator coupled to a casing of the turbine engine;
- machine-readable instructions;
- and
- at least one processor circuit configured to at least one instantiate or execute the machine-readable instructions to:
- monitor a tip clearance between a rotor blade and the casing of the turbine engine;
- determine whether the tip clearance is within a threshold distance from the casing;
- and
- cause, via the actuator, an actuation of a first portion of the casing with respect to the rotor blade to cause the tip clearance to be within the threshold distance from the casing, wherein the first portion of the casing actuates with respect to a second portion of the casing.
A non-transitory computer-readable medium to execute machine-readable instructions, wherein the machine-readable instructions are configured to:
- monitor a tip clearance between a rotor blade and a casing of a turbine engine;
- determine whether the tip clearance is within a threshold distance from the casing;
- and
- cause, via an actuator coupled to the casing of the turbine engine, an actuation of a first portion of the casing with respect to the rotor blade to cause the tip clearance to be within the threshold distance from the casing, wherein the first portion of the casing actuates with respect to a second portion of the casing.
A method to control a tip clearance of a turbine engine, the method comprising:
- monitoring the tip clearance between a rotor blade and a casing of the turbine engine;
- determining whether the tip clearance is within a threshold distance from the casing;
- and
- causing, via an actuator coupled to the casing of the turbine engine, an actuation of a first portion of the casing with respect to the rotor blade to cause the tip clearance to be within the threshold distance from the casing, wherein the first portion of the casing actuates with respect to a second portion of the casing.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.