Compressor Fouling Modeling: Relationship Between Computational Roughness and Gas Turbine Operation Time

Gas turbine axial compressor performance is heavily influenced by blade fouling. As a result, the gas turbines efficiency and producible power output decrease. Performance degradation of an axial compressor stage due to fouling can be analyzed by means of simulation through computational fluid dynamics (CFD) codes. Usually these methods reproduce the deteriorated blades by increasing their surface roughness and thickness. Another approach is the scaling of compressor stage performance maps. A model based on stage-by-stage techniques was presented in a previous work. This model is able to estimate the modifications of the overall compressor performance map as a function of the operating hours. The aim of the present study is to combine these two different approaches in order to relate the increase of blade computational surface roughness with compressor operating hours.