Cooling of the hot gas path components plays a key role in modern gas turbines. It allows, due to efficiency reasons, to operate the machines with temperature exceeding components' melting point. The cooling system however brings about some disadvantages as well. If so, we need to enforce the positive effects of cooling and diminish the drawbacks, which influence the reliability of components and the whole machine. To solve such a task we have to perform an optimization which makes it possible to reach the desired goal. The task is approached in the 3D configuration. The search process is performed by means of the evolutionary approach with floatingpoint representation of design variables. Each cooling structure candidate is evaluated on the basis of thermo-mechanical FEM computations done with Ansys via automatically generated script file. These computations are parallelized. The results are compared with the reference case which is the C3X airfoil and they show a potential stored in the cooling system. Appropriate passage distribution makes it possible to improve the operation condition for highly loaded components. Application of evolutionary approach, although most suitable for such problems, is time consuming, so more advanced approach (Conjugate Heat Transfer) requires huge computational power. The analysis is based on original procedure which involves optimization of size and location of internal cooling passages of cylindrical shape within the airfoil. All the channels can freely move within the airfoil cross section and also their number can change. Such a procedure is original.

In generalized method of data reconciliation as equations of conditions beside substance and energy balances can be used equations which don’t have precisely the status of conservation lows. Empirical coefficients in these equations are traded as unknowns’ values. To this kind of equations, in application of the generalized method of data reconciliation in supercritical power unit, can be classified: steam flow capacity of a turbine for a group of stages, adiabatic internal efficiency of group of stages, equations for pressure drop in pipelines and equations for heat transfer in regeneration heat exchangers. Mathematical model of a power unit was developed in the code Thermoflex. Using this model the off-design calculation has been made in several points of loads for the power unit. Using these calculations identification of unknown values and empirical coefficients for generalized method of data reconciliation used in power unit has been made. Additional equations of conditions will be used in the generalized method of data reconciliation which will be used in optimization of measurement placement in redundant measurement system in power unit for new control systems