Exhaust gas temperature spread does not just trigger alarms. It degrades turbine components, creates operational hardships, and cuts asset life. For Fern Engineering, contracted to reduce EGT spread across a major refinery's gas turbine fleet, the problem was clear. The modeling complexity was not.
The fuel supply manifold of a Rolls Royce Avon gas turbine involves dozens of fittings, bends, orifices, and tolerance variations across every nozzle branch. Prior to Datacor Arrow, analyses like this were done by hand. Coefficient lookups were laborious. Large-scale models were, as Fern's president put it, simply impossible.
Fern selected Arrow specifically for its ability to model critical (sonic) orifices and handle large element counts with rigorous compressible flow accuracy. Before committing to the full 92-junction model, they benchmarked Arrow's sonic choking predictions against measured test data. The results matched to within 2%.
They then ran the full model, including tolerance variation scenarios across branch fittings and orifices, to quantify fuel flow variation and estimate EGT spread. Arrow also handled a secondary analysis of the high-pressure inlet air preheating system, in the same tool.
Download the case study to see the test-validated model output and learn how Arrow replaced days of hand calculation with rigorous, scalable compressible flow analysis.