Scalable Modular Tomography Sensor for High-Speed Gas Turbine Exhaust Imaging
Scalable Modular Tomography Sensor for High-Speed Gas Turbine Exhaust Imaging - A Wavelength Electronics White Paper
The aviation, marine and power generation sectors face mounting pressure to reduce emissions whilst maintaining peak thermal efficiency. Understanding what happens inside gas turbine exhausts - where temperatures reach 800°C and gas velocities hit 150 m/s - has traditionally required invasive probes that disturb the very flows they measure, providing only slow, point-source data that fails to capture the spatial complexity of turbulent combustion.
What are the traditional methods of exhaust mapping?
Chemical Species Tomography (CST) offers a transformative alternative: non-intrusive, high-speed, two-dimensional imaging of exhaust plumes. However, existing CST systems face a fundamental problem. They're either too slow to capture dynamic pulsations or lack sufficient beam density for clear imaging. Worse still, each system is custom-built for specific engine sizes, making them prohibitively expensive and completely incompatible across different turbine scales.
This White Paper presents a breakthrough solution developed by researchers from UK universities: a modular, scalable 128-beam CST sensor that achieves 250 frames per second imaging with 8.1 mm spatial resolution across turbines ranging from 0.2 m to over 2.0 m in diameter.
Who should read this White Paper about high-speed gas turbine exhaust imaging?
This resource is essential reading for:
- Combustion engineers developing next-generation low-emission gas turbines for aviation and power generation
- Test facility operators seeking non-intrusive diagnostic tools for turbine exhaust analysis
- Research scientists working on laser absorption spectroscopy and advanced imaging systems
- Technical decision-makers evaluating diagnostic technologies for validating numerical combustion models and extending turbine operational lifespans
What you'll learn from this White Paper
The White Paper details both the engineering challenges and practical solutions behind this modular CST architecture, demonstrating how standardised emitter-receiver units overcome the scalability problems that have plagued previous systems.
Key insights include:
- Modular sensor design - how self-contained emitter-receiver modules with fibre-coupled collimators and custom trans-impedance amplifiers enable plug-and-play reconfiguration for different engine sizes
- High-speed imaging capabilities - achieving 250 fps temporal resolution through wavelength modulation spectroscopy at 188 kHz and 250 kHz, capturing dynamic phenomena like 9 Hz vortex shedding that slower systems miss entirely
- Real-world validation - laboratory results from annular and triple flame setups, plus on-site deployment on a commercial Honeywell 131-9A Auxiliary Power Unit demonstrating accurate water vapour concentration and temperature field reconstruction
- Noise rejection strategies - maintaining measurement precision despite 135 dB acoustic noise, thermal expansion up to 30 mm, and severe mechanical vibrations in industrial test environments
The White Paper includes detailed reconstruction images showing non-uniform gas-state distributions, revealing ring-shaped profiles in water concentration caused by combustion product mixing and swirling - the kind of spatial detail essential for optimising lean-burn technology and diagnosing potential turbine blade failures before they occur.
Why this advances turbine diagnostics?
Traditional extractive sampling cannot capture the spatiotemporal characteristics needed to validate modern combustion models or meet increasingly stringent emission standards.
This modular CST approach provides the real-time, two-dimensional exhaust mapping required for next-generation turbine development - without the complete redesign and prohibitive costs of previous custom systems.
By demonstrating accurate spatial resolution within 1.5 mm of actual flame positions and successfully imaging across hostile environments, this research validates a practical path toward standardised, commercial-grade CST instruments for global aviation and power industries.
Download the White Paper now to discover how modular chemical species tomography is transforming gas turbine exhaust diagnostics and enabling the development of cleaner, more efficient engines.
