Evolution of Rolls-Royce air-cooled turbine blades and feature analysis

During past few decades there has been significant increase in turbine entry temperature (TET) in order to improve gas turbine ability and efficiency, which represents a huge challenge to turbine blades. Rolls-Royce maintains world-leading technology and capability in gas turbines design and manufacture, this study mainly focuses on the evolution of air-cooled turbine blades fabricated by Rolls-Royce, which shows that turbine blade developments are increasingly dependent on the improvement of material science and blade cooling technology. Moreover, its unique blade tip designs which minimize over-tip leakage are also reviewed. Future developments to improve turbine blade ability and reliability including high temperature materials, blade cooling technology and CFD analyzing approach are discussed. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.