We congratulate Maximilian Großhauser on defending his diploma

On February 23, 2026, Maximilian Großhauser successfully defended his diploma thesis entitled "Numerical flow simulation of a gas turbine with particle flow to investigate particle behavior in the gas flow". The thesis was supervised by Luis Wunder, M.Eng., with Dr.-Ing. Daniel Bernhardt and Prof. Dr.-Ing. Michael Beckmann acting as reviewers.

In his work, Mr. Großhauser developed simulation models for calculating a particle flow in a two-stage gas turbine. The aim was to systematically investigate the behavior of particles with diameters between 1 µm and 80 µm in the gas flow. For this purpose, an uncooled turbine and a variant with film cooling of the first guide vane were compared with each other at different momentum ratios. In addition, turbine maps were created to analyze the influence of mass flow, speed and inlet temperature on specific work and efficiency.

The results show that the mass flow in particular has the greatest influence on the performance parameters of the turbine. Film cooling led to a slight reduction in impinging particles, with larger particles (40-80 µm) being particularly affected. At the same time, it became clear that the modeling - especially with regard to heat transfer - has limits and can be further developed.

The work impressively demonstrates how particle flow simulations can be implemented in ANSYS CFX and provides valuable insights into the protection of turbine blades against particle deposits.

We would like to congratulate Mr. Großhauser on his successful defense and wish him all the best for the future.