Patent ID: 7721547

Claim:
A combustion turbine subsystem, comprising: a first stage blade array having a plurality of blades extending in a radial direction from a rotor assembly for rotation in a circumferential direction about an axis of the rotor assembly, said axis of the rotor assembly defining an longitudinal direction and said circumferential direction including a tangential direction component; a plurality of combustors located longitudinally upstream of the first stage blade array, each of said combustors being located radially outboard of the first stage blade array; each combustor exhausting a gas flow in a direction having at least a longitudinally downstream component; a plurality of transition duct bodies, each having an internal passage extending between an inlet and an outlet, wherein the outlet of each transition duct body is circumferentially aligned with the inlet of an adjacent one of the transition duct bodies, each transition duct body being located between a respective combustor and the first stage blade away to receive the gas flow exhausted by the respective combustor into the internal passage through the inlet, said outlet discharging said gas flow from the internal passage toward said first stage blade array, wherein the outlet is longitudinally, tangentially and radially offset from the inlet and the internal passage is curved toward the offset outlet so that the gas flow discharges from the outlet at a discharge angle between the longitudinal direction and the tangential direction, the internal passage of each duct being free of vanes; and a first stage housing defining an annular flow channel between the outlets of the transition duct bodies and the first stage blade array, wherein the annular channel is free of flow turning vanes, whereby the gas flow discharged from the outlet of each transition duct body flows to the first stage blade array without passing any flow turning vanes.