Thermodynamic Analysis and Statistical Investigation of Effective Parameters for Gas Turbine Cycle using the Response Surface Methodology

In this paper, the statistical analyses are presented to study the thermal efficiency and power output of gas turbine (GT) power plants. For analyzing gas turbine operation and performance, a novel approach is developed utilizing the response surface methodology (RSM) which is based on the central composite design (CCD) method. An attempt is made to study the effect of some operational factors (inlet temperatures of turbine and compressor, inlet pressure of compressor, lower heating value of fuel (LHV) and air mass flow rate)  and design parameters (pressure drop of combustion chamber and isentropic efficiency of equipment) on the system’s response. Based on the DoE analysis, regression models are presented to quantify the effects of these parameters on thermal efficiency and net work of the Brayton based gas turbine cycle. The proposed correlations obtained by the analysis have a remarkably satisfactory performance for all simulation data. The error analysis shows a maximum error of 5.5% in numerical computations of response functions for GT power plants. The optimal point of the thermal efficiency and net power output based on the optimized conditions were found to be 45.71% and 4.182 MW, respectively