It is our great pleasure to publish the first issue of the International Journal of Gas Turbine, Propulsion and Power Systems (JGPP). JGPP is a quarterly on-line journal issued by the Gas Turbine Society of Japan (GTSJ). The journal covers a wide range of research and development area concerning gas turbines, turbo-chargers, power unit for propulsion, and their maintenance and repair, as well as relevant technologies ranging from steam turbines, fuel cell or hybrid power systems, and so on. The journal will also contain review articles on, for instance, production and sales information, energy and environmental issues in Japan and Asian countries. Through the publication, we hope to establish and provide an international platform for information exchange in the field of energy and power engineering. GTSJ was established in 1972. During 35 years since establishment, the most important international activity of GTSJ has been to hold the International Gas Turbine Congress (IGTC) every 4 years. IGTC is continuously providing opportunities to exchange the latest information of gas turbines and relating equipment technologies with participants from the world. JGPP intends to publish the papers presented in IGTC as journal papers. A recent activity in Asian countries is the Asian Congress on Gas Turbines (ACGT) launched in 2005. The papers in ACGT will also be welcome to JGPP. We would be delighted if the International Journal of Gas Turbine, Propulsion and Power Systems could deliver valuable and interesting information to the worldwide community of power engineering. Your cooperation and contribution would be highly appreciated.

View full abstract

Recently especially after 1990, we have experienced so many natural disasters or abnormal climate changes which might have been caused by global warming. Now it became common understanding that the green house gas or CO2 emitted by the combustion of fossil fuel is the main cause of the global warming. Reflecting the economic growth and increase in population, the consumption of fossil fuel is expected to increase largely during this century especially by remarkable energy requirement in developing countries. Japan has committed to decrease GHG (green house gas) emission level by 6% compared with 1990 emission level at the 1st Commitment Period (2008-2012) given by the requirement under Kyoto-Protocol. On the other hand, Japan also has to meet the energy requirement needed during its term, even though the increasing ratio is so mild compared with the past or developing countries. However recent forecast expects GHG emission level at that time will exceed about 13 % over the 1990 level, which forces Japan to take further energy saving technologies such as adopting higher efficient gas turbine cycle. This paper explains the Japanese energy situation, future energy and demand prospect, and finally the outline how to meet the above mentioned CO2 emission target, focusing the importance of energy saving technologies.

View full abstract

Japan depends on imports for most energy resources. To obtain stable supplies of energy and protect the global environment, not only high-efficiency use of existing fossil-based power generation but unused resources’ reexamination, waste material utilization, and highly effective use of such resources will be important. Discoverable reserves of bituminous raw materials are several times larger than that of crude (figure 1). In Japan, power-generation infrastructures are equipped in incineration of around 60% of the waste and the thermal-efficiency is only around 10% on the average. When introducing the high-efficiency technologies into waste incinerators, its electricity corresponds to around 4% power demand of the electric power industry or one second of hydroelectric generation. Developments of integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) continue worldwide, and such technologies enable high-efficiency generation from various quality resources. This paper reviews the trends of IGCCs’ developments worldwide and outlines combustion technologies of the high temperature gas turbine for IGCC in Japan.

View full abstract

In a preburner of liquid rocket engines, some liquid-oxygen (LOX) posts, which introduced oxygen into combustion chamber, experienced severe flow-induced vibration due to unsteady cryogenic hydrogen flow. The mechanism of the vibration has not been fully understood because of the complexity of the flow field. In the present study, a new numerical method was developed to analyze the flow field of hydrogen, whose characteristic properties lie in its non-idealness and compressibility. The unsteady hydrogen flow inside the preburner unit was analyzed to investigate the details of hydrogen flow field as well as the mechanism of LOX post vibration. It was clarified that hydrogen flow inside the manifold and fluid dynamic forces on LOX posts were strongly affected by vortices shed from the junction at the upstream of the inlet. A baffle plate put inside the manifold was shown to reduce unsteady fluid forces on the LOX posts.

View full abstract

This paper presents a new RANS-based method for predicting bypass transition of the boundary layer using intermittency transport equation. The base program is based on the boundary-layer analysis code given by Schmidt and Patankar (1988), implemented with Myong-Kasagi κ- ε turbulence model. The intermittency transport equation proposed in this study is the modification of Cho and Chung model (1992) with respect to the diffusion term and empirical model constants. The intermittent behavior of the transitional flow is invoked in the computation when the momentum-thickness based Reynolds number exceed a criterion given by the empirical correlation of Abu-Ghannam and Shaw (1980). The method proposed in this study is applied to the prediction of boundary layer transition under the influence of free stream turbulence and pressure gradient. Through the comparison of the calculated results with the corresponding experimental data, for example ERCOFTAC T3A, the proposed method is proven to have a potential as a predictive tool of FST (free stream turbulence intensity)-induced boundary layer transition.

View full abstract