No.2 Succession of Proven Design Features

MHI gas turbine's basic features such as "Stacked disk type rotor", "Cannular type combustor", "Cold End Drive", "Two-Bearing supported rotor", "4 stage Reaction Turbine" and "Tangential Strut" are now the common design practice for all heavy duty engines, all of which MHI had from the beginning.

MHI understood about the huge torque transfer through the compressor shaft to the generator, thus MHI's compressor shaft has radial pins at the disc contact surface to ensure proper torque transfer, which prevents such common mistakes as disc slippage. The rotating blade can be removed without disassembly of the rotor, and the compressor latter stages and the turbine have inner casings to control and obtain ideal tip clearances. The rotor cooling air is extracted from compressor discharge and cooled in an external cooler, which enables us to apply reliable 3-1/2 Ni alloy steel material, thus the user can have confidence of long rotor life. Dissipated heat at the cooler is effectively recovered as fuel heating to obtain better thermal efficiency.

MHI confidently believes that the most important mission for gas turbine power generation is reliability. And therefore, design considerations and strong efforts is concentrated on the high temperature region. Big design changes in other parts of the engine, which may involve high risks, must be avoided as much as possible. Furthermore, MHI made a strong policy to undertake thorough verification of new technologies prior to application, no matter how small the changes may be. This succession of proven design features and our thorough verification of new technologies represent the fundamental base of MHI gas turbine's reliability.