Proceedings of ICEE 2009 3rd International Conference on Energy and Environment,

7-8 December 2009, Malacca, Malaysia

978-1-4244-5145-6/09/$26.00 2009 IEEE 40

Study the Effect of Variable Vanes on Performance of
Axial Compressor for Single Shaft Gas Turbine
Cogeneration Plant

Syed Ihtsham-ul-Haq Gilani
a
, Aklilu Tesfamichael Baheta
b
, C.Rangkuti
c
University Technology PETRONAS Department of Mechanical Engineering
Bandar Seri Iskandar, 31750, Tronoh, Perak, MALAYSIA
syedihtsham@petronas.com.my
a
, aklilu_tesfamichael@utp.edu.my
b
, chalilullah@utp.edu.my
c



Abstract The study of the performance of a gas turbine power
plant involves complex components. One of the most important
component in the modeling of a gas turbine is an axial
compressor as in the first few stages involve variable vanes to
regulate the flow and avoid surging. Furthermore, a single shaft
gas turbine cogeneration plant maintains the exhaust gas
temperature for the sake of steam production by regulating the
variable vanes. Associated with that compressor performance
maps are changing continuously as the blades angle change.
Therefore, this paper studies the compressor characteristics
including the variable stator vanes effect using appropriate
scaling law and empirical formulae. Simulation is used to study
the effect of variable stator vanes on the performance of the axial
compressor working in a single shaft gas turbine cogeneration
plant. Fixed geometry and variable geometry compressor air flow
regulation, turbine exhaust temperatures are compared. The
other results include both the accessible experimental data and
the simulation output.

Keywords- Axial compressor; variable stator vanes; performance
map; gas turbine
I. INTRODUCTION
In most gas turbine applications multi stage axial flow
compressors are used to get higher pressure ratio. An axial
flow compressor is one in which the flow enters the
compressor in an axial direction (parallel with the axis of
rotation), and exits also in the same direction. Generally
compressors are optimized at design point. When they operate
at off-design, the performance is poor because the blade
passages are not adequate for the new flow conditions. In
order to improve part-load performance, it is necessary to re-
position the blade passages. This can be done with blade re-
staggering. Compressors with this capability are called
variable geometry compressors. In case of single shaft gas
turbine based cogeneration, variable vanes are regulated to
control the air mass flow so that the gas turbine exhaust gas
temperature is maintained at the set value. At low part load
bleeding of compressed air is done at the intermediate stage or
the downstream of the compressor to avoid surge formation.
Basically, intermediate stage compressed air bleeding and
re-positioning the variable vanes (VVs) will change the
compressor performance map. Hence, there should be a
method to predict the performance map of variable geometry
compressor. To get this map different methods have been
used. Simulations have been done using meanline stage-
stacking modeling technique. This method incorporates
individual stage performance modeling. In light of this, using
generalized stage characteristics and stage staking method D.
E. Muir et al. [1] studied a variable geometry double spool
engine for health monitoring of Canadian Navy engines. The
variable vanes of the compressor are regulated based on the
shaft speed to avoid unstable operating condition. Similarly,
C. Bringhenti and J R Barbosa [2] simulated double shaft gas
turbine, having variable geometry compressor and turbine, to
search for better performance operation. Ma Wentong [3] has
estimated the overall compressor performance characteristics
through a stage by stage calculation based on the improved
analogy theory and the average stage characteristics method.
S. A. Magdy [4] used one-dimensional row-by-row method
for design and off-design performance analysis of axial
compressor. These two methods could accommodate
compressor geometry change and compressed air bleeding, but
they need detailed information. Stage by stage method
requires each stage compressor characteristic map. The row by
row method requires detail geometric dimensions of the
compressor. Furthermore, these maps are proprietary of the
manufactures, which usually they do not provide for their
competitive position in the market. Therefore, a method is
required that can produce compressor performance map at a
given bleeding and VVs position.
The other method is scaling law. This method has been
used successfully to generate turbine and compressor
component maps for gas turbine simulation purpose [5- 6].
However, the method is used only for a fixed geometry
compressor and turbine. Therefore, this paper studies the
compressor characteristics including the variable vanes effect
using appropriate scaling law and empirical formulae. To
accommodate the change of compressor map parameter
correction coefficients are introduced. For any given VVs


978-1-4244-5145-6/09/$26.00 2009 IEEE 41

0 5 10 15 20 25
0.65
0.7
0.75
0.8
0.85
0.9
0.95
Corrected flow [kg/s]
E
f
f
i
c
i
e
n
c
y
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.7
0.8
0.6
0.9
1
1.1
1.2
position the new compressor map is obtained by multiplying
the design point map parameters by their corresponding
correction coefficients. The effect of variable vanes on a
single shaft gas turbine compressor is exemplified. The fixed
geometry compressor air flow and turbine exit gas temperature
are included. The simulated data are compared with the
accessible plant data.
II. SCALING FACTOR CALCULATION
The compressor design data (mass flow of air = 21.01kg/s,
pressure ratio =12.05 and efficiency=86.08) are taken from
[7]. The scaling equations used for the compressor maps are
[8]:
1 ) 1 (
1
1
+

=
M
MD
D
pr
pr
pr
pr (1)

D
MD
D
m
m
m
m

= (2)

D
MD
D

=
(3)
where the subscript D is the design point values of scaled
components, MD is the design point map values of known
components and M is an arbitrary point values on the known
map.
The closer these values to 1.0, the more reasonable are the
new generated maps of the component. Conversely, however,
not being close to 1.0 does not necessarily mean that the
simulation is poor since many maps have been shown to be
typical over quite large ranges in the variables [8].
Scaling factors are calculated from known compressor
maps together with their design data, which is obtained from
open literature [9]. The calculated scaling factors to be used
for map generation are summarized with their design point
data in Table I. Using scaling factors the NASA research
result raw data of the compressor are transformed to other
compressor performance maps with the help of (1) to (3). The
converted data performance plots are shown in Figs. 1 and 2.
TABLE I: SUMMARY OF THE DESIGN POINT OF THE COMPRESSOR AND THE
SCALING FACTORS
Compressor
parameters
Design data
of
Taurus 60
Design data of
literature
component
Scaling
factor
pr
12.047 12 1.004
m
21.01 70.308 0.299

86.08 85.1 1.012
0 5 10 15 20 25
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
Corrected flow [kg/s]
P
r
e
s
s
u
r
e

r
a
t
i
o
p p
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
0.7
0.8
0.9
1
1.1
1.2

Figure 1. Taurus 60 compressor map pressure ratio versus corrected flow, for
relative speed varying between 0.3 and 1.2.










Figure 2. Taurus 60 compressor map efficiency versus corrected flow, for
relative speed varying between 0.3 and 1.2.
In general the characteristics of compressor (Figs. 1 and 2),
show the dependence of the compression pressure ratio and
efficiency of compressor on the air mass flowing through it,
and the rotational speed, make it possible to determine the
conditions of the compressor integrated with other units of the
engine. The characteristics serve to determine the compressor
parameters provided two non-dimensional parameters are
known. However, these maps are useful for a fixed geometry
compressor.
III. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF VARIABLE VANE
SYSTEM AXIAL COMPRESSOR
One of the methods for improving the performance a gas
turbine is implementing a cogeneration plant. By introducing a
heat recovery at the exit of the gas turbine steam can be
recovered from the exhaust gas and the steam can be used for
driving a steam turbine, heating purpose or driving absorption
chillier. However, to recover the heat at the exit of the turbine
the exhaust gas temperature must be maintained at a certain
value. Simultaneously regulating the fuel and the air flow
results to meet the part load demand and maintain the exhaust


978-1-4244-5145-6/09/$26.00 2009 IEEE 42


Figure 3. Regulating the variable vanes opening of a compressor stage by
changing the setting angle of blades of stator vane rings to control the air flow
velocity; (a) decreased axial velocity,(b) design axial velocity, (c) increased
axial velocity.
gas temperature. To regulate the air flow the compressor
should have variable stator vanes. Fig. 3 illustrates the change
in stator vane openings under part load operating conditions.
Regulating the variable vanes opening would help to maintain
the exhaust gas temperature. This in turn improves the total
cogeneration efficiency. The increase and decrease of the air
flow is proportional to the axial velocity. Therefore, case (a)
has low axial velocity consequently results low air mass flow,
where as the axial velocity at case (b) is at design point and it
has the design point air mass flow, and case (c) has higher
axial velocity consequently results higher air mass flow.
A. Compressor Variable Vanes System
The Variable Vanes (VVs) system position is varying
depending on the gas turbine output set values. This change of
vanes position varies the effective volume of air which enters
the compressor rotor. The axial compressor used in this gas
turbine VVs system consists of a single row of variable Inlet
Guide Vanes (IGVs) and three rows of Variable Stator Vanes
(VSVs). This cogeneration has two modes of operation, i.e.,
the load is less than 50% and greater than 50%. For load less
than 50%, it is running to meet the power demand, and during
this mode of operation the VVs are fully opened while the
bleed valve is regulated. For load greater than 50% the bleed
valve is fully closed while the VVs are regulated to maintain
the exhaust gas temperature at the set point, and the fuel flow
regulated to meet the part load.
For the first mode of operation where the part load is less
than 50% the bleed valve opening is regulated. It is designed
to prevent engine surge by reducing backpressure imposed on
the engine compressor during acceleration and low load
operation. Furthermore, in this mode VVs are opened fully
(100%), whereas the compressor downstream air flow is
regulated with the help of bleed valve [10]. The controlled
parameter is load. A decreasing linear percentage bleed with
load is assumed. Trial and error and method is used to select
the model. Statistical analysis of the residuals mean with 95%
confidence interval for compressor pressure ratio is
0010 . 0 0044 . 0 . Since the intervals are centered close to
zero and the mean standard deviation is small, this suggests
that the model is valid representation and is given by:
5 . 13
400
+ =
net
b
W
m
(4)
where W
net
is the power in kW and
b
m in percentage.
For the second mode of operation, it is known that for each
position of the VVs its performance map is changing to
accommodate this change correction coefficient models are
developed. The gas turbine data is monitored and stored by
Turbotronic device, but this device does not monitor the
absolute VVs angle rather it monitors the VVs percentage
opening ( ). To overcome, unavailability of VVs absolute
angle opening modeling was done based on VVs percentage
opening . To find the correction coefficients trend simulation
was done for a fixed geometry compressor for a set of
experimental data. Once simulated the compressor actual to
simulated pressure ratio versus the percentage VVs openings
was plotted and negative linear slope trend is obtained.
After a number of iterations and validations correction
coefficients (cco) are obtained and given by (5) and (6). The
compressor flow correction coefficient coincides with the
pressure ratio correction coefficient whereas the efficiency
correction coefficient is different and is modeled as:
819787 . 0 10 90667 . 2
3
+ = =

acco cco
m pr (5)


9896667 . 0 10 66667 . 1
4
+ =


cco
(6)

For each VVs percentage opening, the new compressor
performance map is obtained by multiplying the design point
performance map parameters with their respective correction
coefficients. Using the modified compressor performance map
if any of the two dimensionless parameters are known the rest
of the parameters can be determined easily.
IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Once the design point scaling factors and the compressor maps
are obtained axial compressor working in a single shaft
cogeneration plant is simulated for a wide range of part load.
There are two modes of operation and when the part load
reaches 50% the exhaust temperature is ramped up to the set
value. Hence properties are suddenly changing at that point to
accommodate the mode of operation change. This is
manifested in all the results. As shown in Fig. 4, the air mass
flow is increasing as the part load increase to meet the power
demand and the set exhaust gas temperature. The fixed
geometry compressor air mass flow is almost constant in all
part load case, and the trend is far from the variable geometry
compressor result. Their corresponding turbine exhaust
temperatures are indicated in Fig. 5. As can be seen, the fixed
geometry compressor maps model simulation shows the


978-1-4244-5145-6/09/$26.00 2009 IEEE 44

turbine exhaust gas temperature is increasing continuously
with load. Whereas the variable geometry compressor model


Figure 4. Compressor air flow versus part load variation.




Figure 5. Variation turbine exit temperature versus part load.

simulation shows the turbine exhaust temperature is slightly
increasing in the first mode, suddenly jump and remains
constant at the set temperature value. Therefore, fixed
geometry compressor model cannot be used to represent
variable geometry compressor.

Fig. 6 shows the variation of the compressor isentropic
efficiency. The isentropic efficiency is relatively low when the
part load is low. It then increases as the part load approaches
the full load.

Fig. 7 shows compressor exit pressure variation with part load.
Compressor exit pressure (pressure ratio) is reducing as the
part load decrease. But in the first mode exit pressure is higher
than the second mode to compromise the air bleeding at the
downstream of the compressor.



Figure 6. Compressor efficiency versus part load variation.



Figure 7. Compressor pressure ratio versus part load variation.

Fig. 8 represents the variation of the VVs opening with
part load. In the first mode of operation the variable vanes are
fully open. Whereas in the second mode of operation variable
vanes percentage opening is regulated and increasing with part



Figure 8. Compressor variable vanes opening versus part load variation.


978-1-4244-5145-6/09/$26.00 2009 IEEE 44

load as a result the turbine exhaust gas temperature is
maintained at the set value.
V. CONCLUSIONS
Using scaling factor method an axial flow compressor maps
are developed. These maps are used to analyze the
performance of a fixed geometry compressor. The variable
geometry compressor maps are changing to accommodate that
appropriate correction coefficients are introduced. The
modified performance maps are used for the study of axial
compressor working in a single shaft gas turbine cogeneration
plant. The system is simulated for a wide part load range. The
predicted compressor parameters are compared with available
actual data and show good agreement.

Nomenclature
percentage angle of opening of variable vanes
ca axial component of absolute flow velocity
c1a axial component of absolute flow velocity at inlet to rotor blade ring,
compressor efficiency
a
m mass flow of air
pr pressure ratio
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors wish to thank Universiti Tecknologi PETRONAS
for the opportunity to use data to perform the investigations
and for the research grant.

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