SINOPSIS

The focus of the paper is to describe concepts and criteria developed to design high performance axial flow turbines over the last forty years. These have been evolved through enhanced understanding of loss generation mechanisms acquired from the use of controlled physical and numerical experiments discussed in the paper. Incorporation of these design concepts has resulted in the improvement of adiabatic efficiency for both high and low pressure turbines by 2-4%. A number of these concepts have also been applied for fans and compressors to achieve 2-5% efficiency improvements. Application of the concepts, criteria and computer based flow simulation tools have also resulted in significantly reduced number of prototype rig testing during a typical engine development process.