This simulator inspects a cutaway stationary gas turbine: a compressor raises inlet air to pressure, a combustor adds heat at that pressure, and a turbine expands the hot gas, driving both the compressor and a useful shaft load. Change pressure ratio, firing temperature and component efficiencies, then compare gross turbine output, compressor demand and net useful shaft power.
• A real-time 3D cutaway gas-turbine workbench (compressor, combustor, turbine and output shaft) with home view, focus-selected-part, auto-rotate, expand, show/hide outer shell and hide-labels scene tools; state numbers match a reference T-s diagram and shaft rotation/flow speed are illustrative. • Experiment controls: pressure ratio, firing (turbine inlet) temperature, compressor isentropic efficiency, turbine isentropic efficiency, combustor pressure loss and mass flow rate sliders, plus pause/resume, single-step and 60 s-step buttons, six playback speeds for the flow animation, and restart/animate/stop actions. • A Curves & measurements analysis tab with two live charts (specific work allocation between turbine and compressor; a pressure-ratio sweep), the underlying air-standard Brayton-cycle equations, and snapshot readouts (turbine work, compressor work, net shaft work, heat input and thermal efficiency). • An Experiments tab with four guided fixtures (a reference gas turbine, an ideal Brayton benchmark with no losses, a case that cannot sustain positive output, and mass-flow scaling of the same operating point) and a Model verification bench with a timestamped event log and copyable trial report. • A Learn & assess tab with four guided lessons, a knowledge-check quiz with reset, and a written model-scope statement linking to a Brayton-cycle reference.
Unlike the Rankine cycle's liquid-pumping pump, the Brayton cycle's compressor works on compressible gas and consumes a substantial fraction of the turbine's gross output — often a third or more — which is why compressor demand is a major cost the simulator tracks explicitly on the specific-work-allocation chart. Raising pressure ratio increases both the compressor work required and the turbine work available, and the pressure-ratio-sweep experiment reveals that net specific work has an optimum pressure ratio for a given firing temperature: too low a ratio limits turbine work, while too high a ratio drives compressor demand up faster than turbine output grows.
The ideal-Brayton-benchmark experiment sets component efficiencies to their ideal (loss-free) values, isolating the cycle's fundamental thermodynamic behavior from the additional efficiency penalty that real, non-ideal compressors and turbines impose.
If the firing temperature is set below the compressor's outlet temperature, the combustor would need to remove heat rather than add it — an invalid firing setpoint that the simulator explicitly flags rather than silently computing a nonphysical result, demonstrated in the cannot-sustain-output experiment. When net work comes out negative, the model reports it as an external shaft demand: thermal efficiency becomes unavailable and animation is blocked, since a machine consuming net work is not, in this model's sense, running as a power-producing gas turbine.
This is a steady air-standard open gas-turbine representation using constant specific heat and specific-heat ratio, prescribed mass flow, compressor and turbine efficiencies, and a combustor pressure loss. Heat addition substitutes directly for combustion — fuel mass, chemical composition, emissions and high-temperature property variation with composition are not modeled. There is no regeneration, intercooling, mechanical or electrical losses, surge, startup transients or rotational speed dynamics. The T-s plot joins state endpoints with guide lines rather than exact irreversible process paths, and the exhaust-to-inlet line on that plot represents external heat rejection rather than a physical return pipe.
The compressor works on compressible gas rather than liquid, so raising its pressure requires substantial work — often a third or more of the turbine's gross output. This is fundamentally different from the Rankine cycle's pump, which compresses nearly incompressible liquid and needs comparatively little work.
Yes — for a given firing temperature, net specific work rises with pressure ratio up to a point, then falls as compressor work grows faster than the additional turbine work it enables. The pressure-ratio-sweep experiment traces this curve directly.
The simulator flags this as an invalid firing setpoint rather than computing a nonphysical result, because the combustor would need to remove heat instead of adding it — which contradicts how a combustor operates in this model.
No. Heat addition in the combustor substitutes directly for combustion in this air-standard model; fuel mass, chemical composition, emissions and high-temperature property variation with gas composition are not represented.