GATE: A Simulation Code for Analysis of Gas-Turbine Power Plants

The GATE (GAs Turbine Evaluation) code has been developed to evaluate the design and off-design performance of existing and advanced gas-turbine-based systems for power plant applications. By combining an intuitive, graphical user interface with detailed analytical models for the thermodynamic, heat-transfer and fluid-mechanical processes within gas-turbine-based power plants, GATE can be used by novices as well as experts for complex design and simulation studies. It can model a variety of gas turbine configurations and cooling technologies, and users can also interactively design and analyze an associated steam bottoming cycle. The basic formulations used in GATE are presented here, along with sample cases demonstrating the power and flexibility of the code.