Congratulations to Dr Masha Folk (Alumna from the 2014 CDT in Gas Turbine Aerodynamics cohort), Professor Robert Miller and Dr John Coull for receiving the 2019 Gas Turbine Award, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) highest annual honour in the field.
Dr Folk is only the third female recipient since it was founded and Professor Miller has won the award for a fourth time.
The award was given for the paper ‘The Impact of Combustor Turbulence on Turbine Loss Mechanisms’. The paper shows that the extremely high levels of turbulence created in the combustion chamber of a jet engine increases the loss in a turbine blade row located downstream of it by 47%. This contrasts to industry design methods which predict no increase in loss. The paper explains the physical mechanism responsible for this change, allowing it to be modelled, and exploited, in the design of jet engines.
The Gas Turbine Award was established in 1963 and is given once a year in recognition of the most outstanding contribution to the literature of combustion gas turbines or gas turbines thermally combined with nuclear or steam power plants published in the previous year.