Off-Design Performance of an Interstage Turbine Burner Turbofan Engine

This paper focuses on the off-design performance of a turbofan engine with an interstage turbine burner (ITB). The ITB is an additional combustion chamber located between the high-pressure turbine (HPT) and the low-pressure turbine (LPT). The incorporation of ITB in an engine can provide several advantages, especially due to the reduction in the HPT inlet temperature and the associated NO_x emission reduction. The objective is to evaluate the effects of the ITB on the off-design performance of a turbofan engine. The baseline engine is a contemporary classical turbofan. The effects of the ITB are evaluated on two aspects: first, the influences of an ITB on the engine cycle performance; second, the influences of an ITB on the component characteristics. The dual combustors of an ITB engine provide an extra degree-of-freedom for the engine operation. The analysis shows that a conventional engine has to be oversized to satisfy off-design performance requirement, like the flat rating temperature. However, the application of an ITB eases the restrictions imposed by the off-design performance requirements on the engine design, implying that the off-design performance of an ITB engine can be satisfied without sacrificing the fuel efficiency. Eventually, the performance of the ITB engine exhibits superior characteristics over the baseline engine at the studied operating points over a flight mission.