Improving the Efficiency of the Trent 500 HP Turbine Using Non-Axisymmetric End Walls: Part 1 — Turbine Design

This paper describes the redesign of the HP turbine of the Rolls-Royce Trent 500 engine, making use of non-axisymmetric 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 [1], had already demonstrated significant potential for reducing turbine secondary losses using non-axisymmetric 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 [2], is discussed in detail.