This simulator models a single-shaft, grid-connected, open-cycle gas turbine running the Brayton cycle — compression, combustion and expansion. Explore the machine from a hot, synchronized operating point, adjusting firing temperature and design settings, and watch how compressor work, turbine work and fuel energy combine to produce net electrical output.
• A real-time 3D machine view with a toggleable casing, showing the compressor, combustor and turbine sections and slowed rotor motion for visibility. • A control desk for pausing/advancing simulated time, stopping the unit, and resuming hot operation, with a 2-second firing-temperature settling lag on changes. • A temperature–entropy diagram and station-measurement table across the compression, combustion and expansion path, alongside step-by-step equations. • Design and loss settings covering compressor/turbine isentropic efficiencies, pressure losses, and optional recuperation. • A pressure-ratio investigation sweep showing net MW at fixed firing temperature and corrected airflow as compressor pressure ratio varies. • Fault injection (intake filter restriction, compressor fouling, turbine erosion, exhaust restriction, fuel over-command, low oil pressure, flame failure), trip logic and a verification suite.
Air is drawn in and compressed, raising its pressure and temperature at the cost of compressor work. Fuel is then burned in the combustor, adding heat and raising the gas temperature further at roughly constant pressure. The hot, high-pressure gas then expands through the turbine section, which extracts work — enough to drive the compressor and, with whatever is left over, the electrical generator on the same shaft.
Because the turbine must first supply all of the compressor's work before any shaft power reaches the generator, only the remaining energy after that internal exchange is available for electricity. This model uses variable air specific heat rather than a fixed value, so the balance is computed at the actual gas temperatures rather than a single averaged constant, and it applies density-corrected airflow so that ambient and machine conditions affect the mass flow the turbine actually processes.
The station-measurement table and equations panel let you follow pressure and temperature station by station, with compressor and turbine isentropic efficiencies and pressure losses applied at each step. Optional recuperation preheats compressor discharge air using turbine exhaust heat before combustion, which appears in the model's preheat and stack-temperature readouts; the temperature-entropy diagram shows this as changed inlet conditions to combustion rather than as a separate physical branch.
Teaching protection trips on turbine inlet temperature above 1550 K, low lubricating-oil pressure, or flame failure, each opening isolation instantaneously in this abstraction — there is no gradual coast-down modeled. This is a teaching model, not an OEM performance map: it omits fuel mass added to the gas stream, gas-composition changes, blade-cooling bleeds, compressor surge maps, detailed emissions, shaft startup dynamics and grid transients, and it always initializes at hot, rated-speed operation rather than simulating a cold start.
A single-shaft, grid-connected, open-cycle gas turbine running the Brayton cycle: air compression, constant-pressure combustion, and expansion through the turbine. It uses variable air specific heat, compressor and turbine isentropic efficiencies, pressure losses, density-corrected airflow, optional recuperation and a fuel-energy balance, starting from a hot, already-synchronized operating point.
The turbine and compressor share the same shaft. The turbine must first supply all of the work the compressor needs to keep compressing incoming air; only the shaft power left over after that internal exchange is available to drive the generator and produce electricity.
Recuperation, when enabled, uses heat from the turbine exhaust to preheat the air entering the combustor, reducing the fuel needed to reach a given firing temperature. In this simulator that shows up in the preheat and stack-temperature readouts rather than as an extra diagram branch, and recuperator pressure losses are not modeled.
Illustrative protection trips on turbine inlet temperature above 1550 K, loss of lubricating-oil pressure, or flame failure. Fault injection also covers intake filter restriction, compressor fouling, turbine erosion, exhaust restriction and fuel over-command. Trip shutdown is modeled as an instantaneous isolation abstraction, not a detailed coast-down or bearing/combustion-damage simulation.