NASA's Role in Gas Turbine Technology Development: Accelerating Technical Progress Via Collaboration Between Academia, Industry, and Government Agencies

Abstract

Given the maturity of the gas turbine engine since its invention and considering the limited resources expected to be allocated for NASA aeronautics research and development, we ask the question are NASA technology investments still needed to enable future turbine engine-based propulsion systems? If so, what is NASA's unique role to justify NASA's investment? To address this topic, we first summarize NASA's role and contributions to turbine engine development, specific to both (1) NASA's role in conducting experiments to understand flow physics and provide relevant benchmark validation experiments for computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code development, validation, and assessment and (2) the impact of technologies resulting from NASA collaborations with industry, academia, and other government agencies. Note that the scope of the discussion is limited to the NASA technology contributions with which the author was intimately associated and does not represent the entirety of the NASA contributions to turbine engine technology. The specific research, development, and demonstrations discussed herein were selected to both (1) provide a comprehensive review and reference list of the technology and its impact and (2) identify NASA's unique role and highlight how NASA's involvement resulted in additional benefit to the gas turbine engine community. Second, we will discuss current NASA collaborations that are in progress and provide a status of the results. Finally, we discuss the challenges anticipated for future turbine engine-based propulsion systems for civil aviation and identify potential opportunities for collaboration where NASA involvement would be beneficial.