Fluid Pulsed Thermocouple Rake System for Automated High Gas Temperature Measurements

Abstract

An integral fluid pulsed gas temperature measuring system has been evaluated in a full scale combustion test facility. This was accomplished using an available thermocouple rake which was not specifically designed for pulse operation, but was designed as an aspirating rake. This feature made it possible to use an existing design to verify a cooled/aspirating (pulsed) rake arrangement. Tests were made at various percentages of combustion temperature step changes. The objective was to provide small extrapolation errors with moderately fluctuating combustion turbine inlet temperatures while extending the useful life of thermocouple rakes by measuring to less than full operating test temperatures. This provided a temperature measuring system for operational use in development testing and also could be applied to supervisory control functions as increased reliability and compactness is achieved through the further development in data acquisition and microelectronics.