Effects of Inlet Conditions on the Flow in a Fishtail Curved Diffuser With Strong Curvature

1996 ◽  
Vol 118 (4) ◽  
pp. 772-778 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. I. Yaras

The paper presents detailed measurements of the incompressible flow at the exit of a large-scale 90-degree curved diffuser with strong curvature and significant stream-wise variation in the cross-section aspect ratio. The diffuser flow path approximates the so-called fish-tail diffuser utilized on small gas turbine engines for the transition between the centrifugal impeller and the combustion chamber. Five variations of the inlet boundary layer are considered. The results provide insight into several aspects of the diffuser flow including: the effect of flow turning on diffusion performance; the dominant structures influencing the flow development in the diffuser; and the effect of the inlet boundary layer integral parameters on the diffusion performance and the exit velocity field. The three-dimensional velocity distribution at the diffuser exit is found to be sensitive to circumferentially uniform alterations to the inlet boundary layer. In contrast, circumferential variations in the inlet boundary layer are observed to have only secondary effects on the velocity field at the diffuser exit. The static pressure recovery is observed to be comparable to the published performance of conical diffusers with equivalent included angle and area ratios. Furthermore, both the static pressure recovery and the total pressure losses are observed to be relatively insensitive to variations in the inlet boundary layer. The physical mechanisms dominating the flow development in the diffuser are discussed in light of these observations.

1999 ◽  
Vol 121 (2) ◽  
pp. 410-417 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. I. Yaras

The paper presents detailed measurements of the incompressible flow development in a large-scale 90 deg curved diffuser with strong curvature and significant streamwise variation in cross-sectional aspect ratio. The flow path approximates the so-called fishtail diffuser utilized on small gas turbine engines for the transition between the centrifugal impeller and the combustion chamber. Two variations of the inlet flow, differing in boundary layer thickness and turbulence intensity, are considered. Measurements consist of three components of velocity, static pressure and total pressure distributions at several cross-sectional planes throughout the diffusing bend. The development and mutual interaction of multiple pairs of streamwise vortices, redistribution of the streamwise flow under the influence of these vortices, the resultant streamwise variations in mass-averaged total-pressure and static pressure, and the effect of inlet conditions on these aspects of the flow are examined. The strengths of the vortical structures are found to be sensitive to the inlet flow conditions, with the inlet flow comprising a thinner boundary layer and lower turbulence intensity yielding stronger secondary flows. For both inlet conditions a pair of streamwise vortices develop rapidly within the bend, reaching their peak strength at about 30 deg into the bend. The development of a second pair of vortices commences downstream of this location and continues for the remainder of the bend. Little evidence of the first vortex pair remains at the exit of the diffusing bend. The mass-averaged total pressure loss is found to be insensitive to the range of inlet-flow variations considered herein. However, the rate of generation of this loss along the length of the diffusing bend differs between the two test cases. For the case with the thinner inlet boundary layer, stronger secondary flows result in larger distortion of the streamwise velocity field. Consequently, the static pressure recovery is somewhat lower for this test case. The difference between the streamwise distributions of measured and ideal static pressure is found to be primarily due to total pressure loss in the case of the thick inlet boundary layer. For the thin inlet boundary layer case, however, total pressure loss and flow distortion are observed to influence the pressure recovery by comparable amounts.


Author(s):  
Marcus Kuschel ◽  
Bastian Drechsel ◽  
David Kluß ◽  
Joerg R. Seume

Exhaust diffusers downstream of turbines are used to transform the kinetic energy of the flow into static pressure. The static pressure at the turbine outlet is thus decreased by the diffuser, which in turn increases the technical work as well as the efficiency of the turbine significantly. Consequently, diffuser designs aim to achieve high pressure recovery at a wide range of operating points. Current diffuser design is based on conservative design charts, developed for laminar, uniform, axial flow. However, several previous investigations have shown that the aerodynamic loading and the pressure recovery of diffusers can be increased significantly if the turbine outflow is taken into consideration. Although it is known that the turbine outflow can reduce boundary layer separations in the diffuser, less information is available regarding the physical mechanisms that are responsible for the stabilization of the diffuser flow. An analysis using the Lumley invariance charts shows that high pressure recovery is only achieved for those operating points in which the near-shroud turbulence structure is axi-symmetric with a major radial turbulent transport component. This turbulent transport originates mainly from the wake and the tip vortices of the upstream rotor. These structures energize the boundary layer and thus suppress separation. A logarithmic function is shown that correlates empirically the pressure recovery vs. the relevant Reynolds stresses. The present results suggest that an improved prediction of diffuser performance requires modeling approaches that account for the anisotropy of turbulence.


2018 ◽  
Vol 856 ◽  
pp. 135-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. T. Salesky ◽  
W. Anderson

A number of recent studies have demonstrated the existence of so-called large- and very-large-scale motions (LSM, VLSM) that occur in the logarithmic region of inertia-dominated wall-bounded turbulent flows. These regions exhibit significant streamwise coherence, and have been shown to modulate the amplitude and frequency of small-scale inner-layer fluctuations in smooth-wall turbulent boundary layers. In contrast, the extent to which analogous modulation occurs in inertia-dominated flows subjected to convective thermal stratification (low Richardson number) and Coriolis forcing (low Rossby number), has not been considered. And yet, these parameter values encompass a wide range of important environmental flows. In this article, we present evidence of amplitude modulation (AM) phenomena in the unstably stratified (i.e. convective) atmospheric boundary layer, and link changes in AM to changes in the topology of coherent structures with increasing instability. We perform a suite of large eddy simulations spanning weakly ($-z_{i}/L=3.1$) to highly convective ($-z_{i}/L=1082$) conditions (where$-z_{i}/L$is the bulk stability parameter formed from the boundary-layer depth$z_{i}$and the Obukhov length $L$) to investigate how AM is affected by buoyancy. Results demonstrate that as unstable stratification increases, the inclination angle of surface layer structures (as determined from the two-point correlation of streamwise velocity) increases from$\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FE}\approx 15^{\circ }$for weakly convective conditions to nearly vertical for highly convective conditions. As$-z_{i}/L$increases, LSMs in the streamwise velocity field transition from long, linear updrafts (or horizontal convective rolls) to open cellular patterns, analogous to turbulent Rayleigh–Bénard convection. These changes in the instantaneous velocity field are accompanied by a shift in the outer peak in the streamwise and vertical velocity spectra to smaller dimensionless wavelengths until the energy is concentrated at a single peak. The decoupling procedure proposed by Mathiset al.(J. Fluid Mech., vol. 628, 2009a, pp. 311–337) is used to investigate the extent to which amplitude modulation of small-scale turbulence occurs due to large-scale streamwise and vertical velocity fluctuations. As the spatial attributes of flow structures change from streamwise to vertically dominated, modulation by the large-scale streamwise velocity decreases monotonically. However, the modulating influence of the large-scale vertical velocity remains significant across the stability range considered. We report, finally, that amplitude modulation correlations are insensitive to the computational mesh resolution for flows forced by shear, buoyancy and Coriolis accelerations.


1994 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew C. Foley ◽  
Paul C. Ivey

Detailed measurements using pneumatic probe traverses, blade static pressure tappings and laser anemometry are made in the third stage of a large scale, low speed, four stage, axial flow, research compressor. Inlet conditions show well ordered ‘two dimensional’ flow from approximately 40 to 85% annulus span. Outside of this region, reduced total pressure due to upstream leakage losses aod endwall effects results in high incidence to the following blade row. As a result, peak suction surface static pressure moves forward along the blade chord for both the huh and tip of stators and rotors. At the blade tip however, the peak suction pressure is maintained with chord due to radial flow on the suction surface being entrained into the tip leakage jet. The extent of rotor chord for which this ‘entrainment’ occurs increases with increasing rotor tip clearance gap. The leakage jet from both stators and rotors is seen to ‘roll up’ into a vortex downstream of their respective blade rows.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Schumacher ◽  
Marwan Katurji ◽  
Jiawei Zhang

<p>The evolution of micrometeorological measurements has been recently manifested by developments in methodological and analytical techniques using spatial surface brightness temperature captured by infrared cameras (Schumacher et al. 2019, Katurji and Zawar-Reza 2016). The Thermal Image Velocimetry (TIV) method can now produce accurate 2D advection-velocities using high speed (>20Hz) infrared imagery (Inagaki 2013, Schumacher 2019). However, to further develop TIV methods and achieve a novel micrometeorological measurement technique, all scales of motion within the boundary layer need to be captured.</p><p>Spatial observations of multi-frequency and multi-scale temperature perturbations are a result from the turbulent interaction of the overlying atmosphere and the surface. However, these surface signatures are connected to the larger scales of the atmospheric boundary layer (McNaughton 2002, Träumner 2015). When longer periods (a few hours to a few days) of spatial surface brightness temperatures are observed, the larger scale information needs to be accounted for to build a comprehensive understanding of surface-atmospheric spatial turbulent interactions. Additionally, the time-frequency decomposition of brightness temperature perturbations shows longer periods of 4-15 minutes superimposed over shorter periods of ~ 4–30 seconds. This suggests that that boundary layer dynamic scales (of longer periods) can influence brightness temperature perturbations on the local turbulent scale. An accurate TIV algorithm needs to account for all scales of motion when analysing the time-space variability of locally observed spatial brightness temperature patterns.</p><p>To analyse these propositions temporally high resolved geostationary satellite infrared data from the Himawari 8 satellite was compared to near-surface and high speed (20 Hz) measured air and brightness temperature using thermocouple measurements and infrared cameras. The satellite provides a temporal resolution of 10-minutes and a horizontal resolution of 2 by 2 km per pixel and therefore captures the atmospheric meso γ and micro α scale which signals are usually active for ~10 minutes to < 12 hours. Moreover, the Himawari 8 brightness temperature was used to create the near-surface mean velocity field using TIV. Afterwards, the velocity field was compared to the in-situ measured wind velocity over several days during January 2019.</p><p>The results show that the atmospheric forcing from the micro α scale to lower atmospheric scales has a major impact on the near-surface temperature over several minutes. A significant (p-value: 0.02) positive covariance between the Himawari 8 measurement and the local measured temperature 1.5 cm above the ground on a 10 minute average, specifically concerning cooling and heating patterns, has been found.</p><p>Further analysis demonstrates that the retrieved near-surface 2-D velocity field calculated from the Himawari 8 brightness temperature perturbations is correctly representing the mean velocity. This finding allows the classification of meso-scale atmospheric forcing and its direct connection to local scale turbulent 2-D velocity measurements. This extends the TIV algorithm by a multi-scale component which allows to address inter-scale boundary layer analysis from a new point of view. In respect to the current findings a new experiment will focus on the repeated induced local velocity patterns from large scale forcing which will be measured through the surface brightness temperature.</p>


1996 ◽  
Vol 118 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-217 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. C. Foley ◽  
P. C. Ivey

Detailed measurements using pneumatic probe traverses, blade static pressure tappings, and laser anemometry are made in the third stage of a large-scale, low-speed, four-stage, axial flow, research compressor. Inlet conditions show well-ordered “two-dimensional” flow from approximately 40 to 85 percent annulus span. Outside of this region, reduced total pressure due to upstream leakage losses and endwall effects results in high incidence to the following blade row. As a result, peak suction surface static pressure moves forward along the blade chord for both the hub and tip of stators and rotors. At the blade tip, however, the peak suction pressure is maintained with chord due to radial flow on the suction surface being entrained into the tip leakage jet. The extent of rotor chord for which this “entrainment” occurs increases with increasing rotor tip clearance gap. The leakage jet from both stators and rotors is seen to “roll up” into a vortex downstream of their respective blade rows.


2006 ◽  
Vol 110 (1106) ◽  
pp. 215-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. S. Cohen ◽  
F. Motallebi

Abstract The results of an investigation into the effects that sub-boundary layer vortex generators (SBVGs) have on reducing normal shock-induced turbulent boundary-layer separation are presented. The freestream Mach number and Reynolds number were M = 1·45 and 15·9 × 106/m, respectively. Total pressure profiles, static pressure distributions, surface total pressure distributions, oil flow visualisation and Schlieren photographs were used in the results analysis. The effects of SBVG height, lateral spacing and location upstream of the shock were investigated. A novel curved shape SBVG was also evaluated and comparisons against the conventional flat vane type were made. The results show that in all but two cases, separation was completely eliminated. As expected, the largest SBVGs with height, h = 55%δ, provided the greatest pressure recovery and maximum mixing. However, the shock pressure rise was highest for this case. The experiments showed that the mid height SBVG array with the largest spacing provided similar results to the SBVG array with the largest height. Reducing the distance to shock to 10δ upstream also showed some improvement over the SBVG position of 18δ upstream. It was suggested that total elimination of the separated region may not be required to achieve a balance of improved static pressure recovery whilst minimising the pressure rise through the shock. The effect of curving the SBVGs provided an improved near wall mixing with an improved static and surface total pressure recovery downstream of the separation line. The optimum SBVG for the current flow conditions was found to be the curved vanes of h = 40%δ, with the largest spacing, located at 18δ upstream of the shock. Overall, it was apparent from the results that in comparison to larger vortex generators with a height comparable to δ, for SBVGs the parameters involved become more important in order to obtain the highest degree of mixing from a given SBVG configuration.


Author(s):  
K Vasudeva Karanth ◽  
N Yagnesh Sharma

Flow in centrifugal fans tends to be in a state of instability with flow separation zones on both the suction surface and the front shroud. The overall efficiency of the diffusion process in a centrifugal fan could be enhanced by judiciously introducing the boundary layer suction slots. With easy accessibility of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) as an analytical tool, an extensive numerical whole field analysis of the effect of boundary layer suction slots in discrete regions of suspected separation points is possible. This article attempts to explore the effect of boundary layer suction slots corresponding to various geometrical locations on the impeller as well as on the diffuser. The analysis shows that the suction slots located on the impeller blade near to its trailing edge appreciably improves the static pressure recovery across the fan. Slots provided at a radial distance of 30 per cent from the leading edge of the diffuser vane also significantly contribute to the static pressure recovery across the fan.


1957 ◽  
Vol 61 (554) ◽  
pp. 116-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. A. L. Winternitz ◽  
W. J. Ramsay

SummaryA study has been made of the effect of inlet conditions on the performance of conical diffusers with 4:1 area ratio and 5 and 10 degrees total angle of expansion. The conditions at entry were varied by using different approach lengths of diffuser inlet diameter, and by means of projecting annular screens of woven wire cloth. With this new technique it was possible to vary the velocity distribution substantially within moderate settling lengths, and to produce velocity profiles with inflections. The suitability of the annular screen method of boundary layer generation for diffuser investigations was confirmed from the comparison with the approach length results.Energy and pressure coefficients, as well as diffuser energy efficiency and the conversion efficiency, were found to depend on the diffuser angle β and the momentum thickness ratio at inlet θ/D0. The latter emerged as one of the chief parameters controlling diffuser performance. Variation in the inlet shape parameter H of the order of 20 per cent did not significantly affect the pressure recovery or the losses in the diffuser. For moderately thick boundary layers, θ/D0 X β<0·1, the diffuser angle could be eliminated as a parameter by plotting the pressure coefficient against θ/D0 X β. The Reynolds number based on diffuser inlet diameter was, for essentially incompressible flow, 2·5 X 105 in all tests.


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