Heat transfer measurements in rotating-disc systems Part 2: The rotating cavity with a radial outflow of cooling air

1988 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Northrop ◽  
J.M. Owen
Author(s):  
Abdul A. Jaafar ◽  
Fariborz Motallebi ◽  
Michael Wilson ◽  
J. Michael Owen

In this paper, new experimental results are presented for the flow in a co-rotating disc system with a rotating inner cylinder and a stationary stepped outer casing. The configuration is based on a turbine disc-cooling system used in a gas turbine engine. One of the rotating discs can be heated, and cooling air is introduced through discrete holes angled inward at the periphery of this disc. The cooling air leaves the system through axial clearances between the discs and the outer casing. Some features of computed flows, and both measured and computed heat transfer, were reported previously for this system. New velocity measurements, obtained using Laser Doppler Anemometry, are compared with results from axisymmetric, steady, turbulent flow computations obtained using a low-Reynolds-number k-ε turbulence model. The measurements and computations show that the tangential component of velocity is invariant with axial location in much of the cavity, and the data suggest that Rankine (combined free and forced) vortex flow occurs. The computations fail to reproduce this behaviour, and there are differences between measured and computed details of secondary flow recirculations. Possible reasons for these discrepancies, and their importance for the prediction of associated heat transfer, are discussed.


Author(s):  
Iraj Mirzaee ◽  
Paul Quinn ◽  
Michael Wilson ◽  
J. Michael Owen

In the system considered here, corotating “turbine” discs are cooled by air supplied at the periphery of the system. The system comprises two corotating discs, connected by a rotating cylindrical hub and shrouded by a stepped, stationary cylindrical outer casing. Cooling air enters the system through holes in the periphery of one disc, and leaves through the clearances between the outer casing and the discs. The paper describes a combined computational and experimental study of the heat transfer in the above system. In the experiments, one rotating disc is heated, the hub and outer casing are insulated, and the other disc is quasi-adiabatic. Thermocouples and fluxmeters attached to the heated disc enable the Nusselt numbers, Nu, to be determined for a wide range of rotational speeds and coolant flow rates. Computations are carried out using an axisymmetric elliptic solver incorporating the Launder-Sharma low-Reynolds-number k-ε turbulence model. The flow structure is shown to be complex and depends strongly on the so-called turbulent flow parameter, λT, which incorporates both rotational speed and flow rate. For a given value of λT, the computations show that Nu increases as Reϕ, the rotational Reynolds number, increases. Despite the complexity of the flow, the agreement between the computed and measured Nusselt numbers is reasonably good.


Author(s):  
G. H. Dibelius ◽  
M. Heinen

The local heat transfer from a plane rotating disc enclosed in a casing has been studied experimentally. The disc of 800 mm diameter can be run up to 2000 min−1 at axial distances between disc and casing varied between 5 and 55 mm. Centrifugal or alternatively centripetal flow of cooling air at rates up to ṁ = 1 kg/s can be applied, both with or without an inlet swirl. With the disc rotating in a closed casing (ṁ = 0 kg/s) the influence of the characteristic dimensionless groups on the local heat transfer has been investigated. At a fixed radius, a variation of the local Reynolds Number by either speed or density results in corresponding changes of the heat transfer. However, with a variation of the radius different heat transfer-Re relations are found. In fact, the temperature distribution in the gas caused by the heat flux results in an additional influence of free convection, to be expressed by a Grashof Number. This is confirmed by a comparison of the experimental results with calculations based on Reynolds Analogy and measured friction coefficients. The discrepancies found can be explained only, if in addition to the limitations of the analogy, the influence of free convection is taken into account. Additional results of ongoing experiments concerning the influence of the geometry of the cavity between disc and casing, of the coolant flow rate and of the swirl are presented.


1990 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. P. Morse ◽  
C. L. Ong

The paper presents finite-difference predictions for the convective heat transfer in symmetrically-heated rotating cavities subjected to a radial outflow of cooling air. An elliptic calculation procedure has been used, with the turbulent fluxes estimated by means of a low Reynolds number k-ε model and the familiar ‘turbulence Prandtl number’ concept. The predictions extend to rotational Reynolds numbers of 3.7 × 106 and encompass cases where the disc temperatures may be increasing, constant or decreasing in the radial direction. It is found that the turbulence model leads to predictions of the local and average Nusselt numbers for both discs which are generally within ± 10% of the values from published experimental data, although there appear to be larger systematic errors for the upstream disc than for the downstream disc. It is concluded that the calculations are of sufficient accuracy for engineering design purposes, but that improvements could be brought about by further optimization of the turbulence model.


Author(s):  
Robert Pilbrow ◽  
Hasan Karabay ◽  
Michael Wilson ◽  
J. Michael Owen

In most gas turbines, blade-cooling air is supplied from stationary pre-swirl nozzles that swirl the air in the direction of rotation of the turbine disc. In the “cover-plate” system, the pre-swirl nozzles are located radially inward of the blade-cooling holes in the disc, and the swirling air flows radially outwards in the cavity between the disc and a cover-plate attached to it. In this combined computational and experimental paper, an axisymmetric elliptic solver, incorporating the Launder-Sharma and the Morse low-Reynolds-number k-ε turbulence models, is used to compute the flow and heat transfer. The computed Nusselt numbers for the heated “turbine disc” are compared with measured values obtained from a rotating-disc rig. Comparisons are presented, for a wide range of coolant flow rates, for rotational Reynolds numbers in the range 0.5 × 106 to 1.5 × 106, and for 0.9 < βp < 3.1, where βp is the pre-swirl ratio (or ratio of the tangential component of velocity of the cooling air at inlet to the system to that of the disc). Agreement between the computed and measured Nusselt numbers is reasonably good, particularly at the larger Reynolds numbers. A simplified numerical simulation is also conducted to show the effect of the swirl ratio and the other flow parameters on the flow and heat transfer in the cover-plate system.


Author(s):  
Zixiang Sun ◽  
Klas Lindblad ◽  
John W. Chew ◽  
Colin Young

The buoyancy-affected flow in rotating disc cavities, such as occurs in compressor disc stacks, is known to be complex and difficult to predict. In the present work large eddy simulation (LES) and unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) solutions are compared with other workers’ measurements from an engine representative test rig. The Smagorinsky-Lilly model was employed in the LES simulations, and the RNG k-ε turbulence model was used in the RANS modelling. Three test cases were investigated in a range of Grashof number Gr = 1.87 to 7.41×108 and buoyancy number Bo = 1.65 to 11.5. Consistent with experimental observation, strong unsteadiness was clearly observed in the results of both models, however the LES results exhibited a finer flow structure than the RANS solution. The LES model also achieved significantly better agreement with velocity and heat transfer measurements than the RANS model. Also, temperature contours obtained from the LES results have a finer structure than the tangential velocity contours. Based on the results obtained in this work, further application of LES to flows of industrial complexity is recommended.


Author(s):  
Hasan Karabay ◽  
Robert Pilbrow ◽  
Michael Wilson ◽  
J. Michael Owen

This paper summarises and extends recent theoretical, computational and experimental research into the fluid mechanics, thermodynamics and heat transfer characteristics of the so-called cover-plate pre-swirl system. Experiments were carried out in a purpose-built rotating-disc rig, and the Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations were solved using 2D (axisymmetric) and 3D computational codes, both of which incorporated low-Reynolds-number k-ε turbulence models. The free-vortex flow, which occurs inside the rotating cavity between the disc and cover-plate, is controlled principally by the pre-swirl ratio, βp: this is the ratio of the tangential velocity of the air leaving the nozzles to that of the rotating disc. Computed values of the tangential velocity are in good agreement with measurements, and computed distributions of pressure are in close agreement with those predicted by a one-dimensional theoretical model. It is shown theoretically and computationally that there is a critical pre-swirl ratio, βp,crit, for which the frictional moment on the rotating discs is zero, and there is an optimal pre-swirl ratio, βp,opt, where the average Nusselt number is a minimum. Computations show that, for βp < βp,opt, the temperature of the blade-cooling air decreases as βp increases; for βp > βp,opt, whether the temperature of the cooling air increases or decreases as βp increases depends on the flow conditions and on the temperature difference between the disc and the air. Owing to the three-dimensional flow and heat transfer near the blade-cooling holes, and to unquantifiable uncertainties in the experimental measurements, there were significant differences between the computed and measured temperatures of the blade-cooling air. In the main, the 3D computations produced smaller differences than the 2D computations.


1988 ◽  
Vol 110 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. R. Farthing ◽  
J. M. Owen

Flow visualization and heat transfer measurements have been made in a cavity comprising two nonplane disks of 762 mm diameter and a peripheral shroud, all of which could be rotated up to 2000 rpm. “Cobs,” made from a lightweight foam material and shaped to model the geometry of turbine disks, were attached to the center of each disk. Cooling air at flow rates up to 0.1 kg/s entered the cavity through the center of the “upstream” disk and left via holes in the shroud. The flow structure was found to be similar to that observed in earlier tests for the plane-disk case: a source region, Ekman layers, sink layer, and interior core were observed by flow visualization. Providing the source region did not fill the entire cavity, solutions of the turbulent integral boundary-layer equations provided a reasonable approximation to the Nusselt numbers measured on the heated “downstream” disk.


Author(s):  
Xiaopeng Gan ◽  
Iraj Mirzaee ◽  
J. Michael Owen ◽  
D. Andrew S. Rees ◽  
Michael Wilson

In some engines, corotating gas–turbine discs are cooled by air introduced at the periphery of the system. The air enters through holes in a stationary peripheral casing and leaves through the rim seals between the casing and the discs. This paper describes a combined computational and experimental study of such a system for a range of flowrates and for rotational Reynolds numbers of up to Reϕ = 1.5 × 106. Computations are made using an axisymmetric elliptic solver, incorporating the Launder–Sharma low–Reynolds–number k–ε turbulence model, and velocity measurements are obtained using laser–Doppler anemometry. The stationary peripheral casing creates a recirculation region: there is radial outflow in boundary layers on the discs and inflow in the core between the boundary layers. The radial extent of the recirculation region increases as the flow rate increases and as the rotational speed decreases. In the core, the radial and tangential components of velocity, Vr and Vϕ, are invariant in the axial direction, and the measured values of Vϕ conform to a Rankine–vortex flow. The agreement between the computed and measured velocities is not as good as that found for other rotating–disc systems, and deficiencies in the turbulence model are believed to be responsible.


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