Development of GSP was initiated at the Aerospace Department of the Delft Technical University TUD in 1986 where for jet- and turbofan engine simulation NASA's DYNGEN program (Ref. 2) was used. Since DYNGEN had a rather poor user interface and problems with numerical stability, the first version of GSP was developed by Wout Bouwmans, inheriting features from DYNGEN combined with improved stability and speed of the numerical iteration processes.
After 1989 development continued at NLR, where GSP was converted to standard ANSI FORTRAN-5 and implemented on a powerful mainframe computer. Further improvements, adjustments and extensions to the GSP program were made to make useful simulation of jet engines possible: processes in the gasturbine were modelled with more detail improving accuracy, a fan model calculating the separation into duct- and core air flow was developed, a power turbine module enabling turboshaft engine simulation was implemented, a heat exchanger component for modelling turboshaft engines with recuperators was realized, the user interface was improved and a number of output presentation features were added.
In 1996 it was decided to implement GSP in the object-oriented Borland Delphi environment, providing enhanced extensibility, maintainability and an even better user interface. The object orientation features were fully applied, with the result that new gas turbine components can be easily derived from existing components, using inheritance. The object-oriented Delphi language offers a strict set of rules guarding well against many bugs.
At the end of 1998 the first version 8.0 was released which includes a totally revised gas model, fully describing gas composition, real-gas and dissociation effects. The new multi-reactor 1-dimensional combustor model is implemented, enabling detailed analysis of emission formation. Also detailed fuel specification options (including fuel composition) have been added, allowing specification of any type of fuel including alternative (bio-mass) fuels.
Implemented on Windows, GSP now has a very user-friendly drag&drop interface, allowing quick implementation of new engine models and quick analysis of complex problems. When new simulation challenges emerge, the Delphi object-oriented setup enables short development times for new components and features.
History
