Evaluation of aero gas turbine preliminary weight estimation methods

Abstract

AbstractThe estimation of gas turbine engine weight during the preliminary or conceptual design phase is a key part of a Techno-economic Environmental Risk Analysis (TERA). Several methods that are available in the public domain are analysed and compared, in order to establish the physics driving them and their suitability for the weight estimation of modern gas turbine engines. Among the tested methods, only WATE managed to achieve acceptable accuracy for engine optimisation studies. This work demonstrates that the age and restrictions of existing ‘whole engine based’ methods, along with their dependency on old engine databases make them unsuitable for future and novel aero engines. A hybrid weight modelling approach is proposed as a solution permitting the creation of simple ‘whole engine based’ methods that do not depend on the availability of existing engine data, which are also subject to uncertainties and incoherencies.