Reheat for Gas Turbines

Extract

Some five years ago the author was privileged to deliver a Section Lecture to the Royal Aeronautical Society on the subject of reheat. The present paper attempts to summarise the problems which now arise and to give some idea of the progress which has been made in the intervening years.

In 1949, reheat was in its infancy in Great Britain. A certain amount of progress had been made in the United States but the information from that source was scanty and vague. Tests at the National Gas Turbine Establishment (N.G.T.E.) had given some engine data but this was in the nature of preliminary information only and was by no means complete. In fact the majority of the problems which now beset us were then completely unknown or were considered unimportant. The N.G.T.E. work was valuable, however, in that it demonstrated the practicability of reheat, although at the time the comments of many who saw this and other schemes in operation were somewhat sceptical and definitely unflattering.