Gas turbines performance improvement enabled by Additive Manufacturing

To drive emissions reduction and performance improvement of the gas turbines, Siemens Energy is working continuously with the development and implementation of new advanced technologies. This paper describes the integration of groundbreaking additive manufacturing (AM) technology into the design and manufacturing of gas turbine components. Siemens Energy is already implemented AM technology in the design and manufacturing of combustor components to run gas turbines on green fuels. As an example, the implementation of AM burners in medium-size gas turbines (MTG) with Dry Low Emission (DLE) combustors expands their fuel flexibility and ability to run on hydrogen-rich gases. Today, the SGT-600, -700 and -800 can be offered to run on fuel with up to 75 vol% H2 in the fuel. Integrating AM technology into the design and manufacturing of turbine’s components, such as vanes and blades, leads to substantial improvements in gas turbine efficiency and, as a result, gas turbine fuel consumption and emissions reduction. This paper describes the infusion of AM technology into the design and manufacturing of hot gas path components, in the turbine vanes of Siemens Energy gas turbines. Improving the efficiency of turbine and turbine components is driven by utilizing new advanced cooling systems and better aerodynamics enabled by the practically unlimited capability of AM design and manufacturing. Successful design, manufacturing and field validation of AM vanes in Siemens Energy SGT-700 gas turbine are presented and discussed in this paper. The reliable operation of AM components under real field operation conditions has been confirmed by the total accumulated field experience, which already exceeds 1,700,000 operating hours.