Characterization of a Supersonic Turbine Downstream of a Rotating Detonation Combustor

Author(s):  
Z. Liu ◽  
J. Braun ◽  
G. Paniagua

Rotating detonation combustors (RDCs) offer theoretically a significant total pressure increase, which may result in enhanced cycle efficiency. The fluctuating exhaust of RDC, however, induces low supersonic flow and large flow angle fluctuations at several kHz, which affects the performance of the downstream turbine. In this paper, a numerical methodology is proposed to characterize a supersonic turbine exposed to fluctuations from RDC without any dilution. The inlet conditions of the turbine were extracted from a three-dimensional (3D) unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes simulation of a nozzle attached to a rotating detonation combustor, optimized for minimum flow fluctuations and a mass-flow averaged Mach number of 2 at the nozzle outlet. In a first step, a supersonic turbine able to handle steady Mach 2 inflow was designed based on a method of characteristics solver and total pressure loss was assessed. Afterward, unsteady simulations of eight stator passages exposed to periodic oblique shocks were performed. Total pressure loss was evaluated for several oblique shock frequencies and amplitudes. The unsteady stator outlet profile was extracted and used as inlet condition for the unsteady rotor simulations. Finally, a full stage unsteady simulation was performed to characterize the flow field across the entire turbine stage. Power extraction, airfoil base pressure, and total pressure losses were assessed, which enabled the estimation of the loss mechanisms in supersonic turbine exposed to large unsteady inlet conditions.

Author(s):  
Zhe Liu ◽  
James Braun ◽  
Guillermo Paniagua

Rotating detonation combustors offer theoretically a significant total pressure increase, which may result in enhanced cycle efficiency. The fluctuating exhaust of rotating detonation combustors, however, induces low supersonic flow and large flow angle fluctuations at several kHz which affects the performance of the downstream turbine. For such flows, power extraction can be achieved by either integrating a diffuser with a conventional subsonic turbine or a nozzle with a supersonic turbine. In this paper, a numerical methodology is proposed to characterize a supersonic turbine exposed to fluctuations from rotating detonation combustors without any dilution. The inlet conditions of the turbine were extracted from a three dimensional unsteady Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes simulation of a nozzle attached to a rotating detonation combustor, optimized for minimum flow fluctuations and a mass-flow averaged Mach number of 2 at the nozzle outlet. In a first step, a supersonic turbine able to handle steady Mach 2 inflow was designed based on a method of characteristics solver and total pressure loss was assessed. Afterwards unsteady simulations of eight stator passages exposed to periodic oblique shocks were performed. Total pressure loss was evaluated for several oblique shock frequencies and amplitudes. The unsteady stator outlet profile was extracted and used as inlet condition for the unsteady rotor simulations. Finally, a full stage unsteady simulation was performed to characterize the flow field across the entire turbine stage. Power extraction, airfoil base pressure, and total pressure losses were were assessed, which enabled the estimation of the loss mechanisms in supersonic turbine exposed to large unsteady inlet conditions. Frequency analysis of the pressure field across the turbine rows was used to evaluate the damping of the oblique shock waves.


Author(s):  
Toyotaka Sonoda ◽  
Toshiyuki Arima ◽  
Mineyasu Oana

Experimental and numerical investigations were carried out to gain a better understanding or the flow characteristics within an annular S-shaped duct, including the influence of the shape of the downstream passage located at the exit of the duct on the flow. A duct with six struts and the same geometry as that used to connect the compressor spools on our new experimental small two-spool turbofan engine was investigated. Two types of downstream passage were used. One type had a straight annular passage and the other a curved annular passage with a similar meridional flow path geometry to that of the centrifugal compressor. Results showed that the total pressure loss near the hub is large due to instability of the flow, as compared with that near the casing. Also, a vortex related to the horseshoe vortex was observed near the casing, in the case of the curved annular passage, the total pressure loss near the hub was greatly increased compared with the case of the straight annular passage, and the spatial position of the above vortex depends on the passage core pressure gradient. Furthermore, results of calculation using an in-house-developed three-dimensional Navier-Stokes code with a low Reynolds number k-ε turbulence model were in good qualitative agreement with experimental results. According to the simulation results, a region of very high pressure loss is observed near the hub at the duct exit with the increase of inlet boundary layer thickness. Such regions of high pressure loss may act on the downstream compressor as a large inlet distortion, and strongly affect downstream compressor performance.


1998 ◽  
Vol 120 (4) ◽  
pp. 714-722 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. Sonoda ◽  
T. Arima ◽  
M. Oana

Experimental and numerical investigations were carried out to gain a better understanding of the flow characteristics within an annular S-shaped duct, including the influence of the shape of the downstream passage located at the exit of the duct on the flow. A duct with six struts and the same geometry as that used to connect the compressor spools on our new experimental small two-spool turbofan engine was investigated. Two types of downstream passage were used. One type had a straight annular passage and the other a curved annular passage with a meridional flow path geometry similar to that of the centrifugal compressor. Results showed that the total pressure loss near the hub is large due to instability of the flow, as compared with that near the casing. Also, a vortex related to the horseshoe vortex was observed near the casing. In the case of the curved annular passage, the total pressure loss near the hub was greatly increased compared with the case of the straight annular passage, and the spatial position of this vortex depends on the passage core pressure gradient. Furthermore, results of calculation using an in-house-developed three-dimensional Navier–Stokes code with a low-Reynolds-number k–ε turbulence model were in good qualitative agreement with experimental results. According to the simulation results, a region of very high pressure loss is observed near the hub at the duct exit with the increase of inlet boundary layer thickness. Such regions of high pressure loss may act on the downstream compressor as a large inlet distortion, and strongly affect downstream compressor performance.


1995 ◽  
Vol 117 (1) ◽  
pp. 116-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. R. By ◽  
R. Kunz ◽  
B. Lakshminarayana

A three-dimensional, incompressible, viscous flow code, developed by NASA AMES (INS3D) using the pseudo-compressibility method, is modified for torque converter flow field computations. The code is used to predict the velocity and pressure fields in the pump of an automotive torque converter. Numerical results are compared to measured static pressure and velocity distributions. Results show that: 1) the code can fairly well predict the Cp distribution, the distribution of the through-flow velocity, and the secondary flow field, 2) pump rotation has a major effect on the secondary flow field and on the mass-averaged total pressure loss, and 3) inlet velocity profiles have a profound effect on the mass-averaged total pressure loss.


Author(s):  
Du Li ◽  
Dazhong Lao ◽  
Ben Zhao ◽  
Ce Yang

A combined compressor consisting of an axial rotor, a stator and a centrifugal rotor was used in a vehicle engine turbocharger because of its better performance compared with a single stage compressor under space restrictions. There have been many studies on the inlet distortion effect on multistage axial compressors; however, few studies have been performed for axial-radial combined compressors. To investigate stator wake characteristics, an axial-radial compressor was unsteadily simulated with three-dimensional Reynolds averaged Navier–Stokes equations by “domain-scaling” the rotor/stator interface method under uniform, circumferential distorted and combined distorted total pressure inlet conditions. In addition to the axial-radial configuration, the unsteady method of analysis was applied to a stand-alone axial stage by the same unsteady method. A comparison shows that at the vane stator outlet, a radial distortion is formed and different total pressure loss occurs at different spans. The circumferential interfaces between the distorted and non-distorted regions generate different flow characteristics due to different pitchwise pressure gradient directions and the absence of a downstream rotor. The stator wake causes more flow loss in the distorted case but less flow angle fluctuation compared to the uniform inlet condition. The downstream potential effect and inlet distortion creates strong pressure pulsation at the stator blade surface. A stator wake oscillation characteristics study shows disturbing effects on the stator wake from the upstream axial rotor, and the downstream radial rotor acts differently both spanwise and pitchwise.


Author(s):  
Jan Mihalyovics ◽  
Christian Brück ◽  
Dieter Peitsch ◽  
Ilias Vasilopoulos ◽  
Marcus Meyer

The objective of the presented work is to perform numerical and experimental studies on compressor stators. This paper presents the modification of a baseline stator design using numerical optimization resulting in a new 3D stator. The Rolls Royce in-house compressible flow solver HYDRA was employed to predict the 3D flow, solving the steady RANS equations with the Spalart-Allmaras turbulence model, and its corresponding discrete adjoint solver. The performance gradients with respect to the input design parameters were used to optimize the stator blade with respect to the total pressure loss over a prescribed incidence range, while additionally minimizing the flow deviation from the axial direction at the stator exit. Non-uniform profile boundary conditions, being derived from the experimental measurements, have been defined at the inlet of the CFD domain. The presented results show a remarkable decrease in the axial exit flow angle deviation and a minor decrease in the total pressure loss. Experiments were conducted on two compressor blade sets investigating the three-dimensional flow in an annular compressor stator cascade. Comparing the baseline flow of the 42° turning stator shows that the optimized stator design minimizes the secondary flow phenomena. The experimental investigation discusses the impact of steady flow conditions on each stator design while focusing on the comparison of the 3D optimized design to the baseline case. The flow conditions were investigated using five-hole probe pressure measurements in the wake of the blades. Furthermore, oil-flow visualization was applied to characterize flow phenomena. These experimental results are compared with the CFD calculations.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Craven ◽  
Keith Kirkpatrick ◽  
Stephen Idem

Abstract After constructing a scale model of planned changes to a power plant exhaust system, tests were performed to measure pressure losses in the transition, silencer, and stack. A dimension of 0.30 m (1.0 ft) for the scale model corresponded to 3.7 m (12.0 ft) at full scale. To the extent possible, the scale model tests exhibited geometric similarity with the actual power plant. Total pressure loss coefficients varied between 2.122, 1.969, and 1.932, for three separate scale model configurations that were considered. A combination of turning vanes and splitter vanes in the five-gore elbow, coupled with the use of turning vanes in the rectangular elbow yielded the lowest total pressure loss. Although Reynolds number similarity between the scale model experiments and the actual power plant was not attained, Reynolds number independence was achieved in the tests. The results from this study was applied to model pressure loss in the actual power plant. The scale model testing revealed that utilization of the exhaust ducting design designated as Case A would yield a sufficiently low pressure loss that it would not degrade the performance of the combustion turbine in the power plant to be repaired. Therefore it was selected for inclusion in the retro-fitting of the power plant to facilitate its being quickly brought back on-line.


Author(s):  
Ping-Ping Chen ◽  
Wei-Yang Qiao ◽  
Karsten Liesner ◽  
Robert Meyer

The large secondary flow area in the compressor hub-corner region usually leads to three-dimensional separation in the passage with large amounts of total pressure loss. In this paper numerical simulations of a linear high-speed compressor cascade, consisting of five NACA 65-K48 stator profiles, were performed to analyze the flow mechanism of hub-corner separation for the base flow. Experimental validation is used to verify the numerical results. Active control of the hub-corner separation was investigated by using boundary layer suction. The influence of the selected locations of the endwall suction slot was investigated in an effort to quantify the gains of the compressor cascade performance. The results show that the optimal chordwise location should contain the development section of the three-dimensional corner separation downstream of the 3D corner separation onset. The best pitchwise location should be close enough to the vanes’ suction surface. Therefore the optimal endwall suction location is the MTE slot, the one from 50% to 75% chord at the hub, close to the blade suction surface. By use of the MTE slot with 1% suction flow ratio, the total-pressure loss is substantially decreased by about 15.2% in the CFD calculations and 9.7% in the measurement at the design operating condition.


Author(s):  
David J. Cerantola ◽  
A. M. Birk

A genetic algorithm was implemented to determine preferential solutions of a short annular diffuser exhaust system of length 1.5Do (outer annulus diameters). Five free variables defined the centre body shape and two variables determined the outer wall profile. Diffuser performance was evaluated using three objectives—(i) diffuser pressure recovery, (ii) outlet velocity uniformity, and (iii) total pressure loss—that were calculated from steady state solutions obtained using the computational fluid dynamics software FLUENT 13.0 with the realizable k-ε turbulence model and enhanced wall treatment. Inlet conditions were ReDh = 8.5 × 104 and M = 0.23. After thirty-five generations, a paraboloid-shaped centre body with length 0.74Do and initial annular expansion of approximately 14° produced preferential solutions. A configuration with a converging outer wall above the centre body developed greater outlet flow uniformity and lower total pressure loss whereas a straight outer wall followed by the solid diffuser generated more static pressure recovery.


2013 ◽  
Vol 117 (1188) ◽  
pp. 193-211 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. L. N. Desikan ◽  
J. Kurian

AbstractThis paper presents the experimental results of the role of struts in supersonic mixing. Experiments were carried out with novel strut configurations to show their capabilities on mixing with reasonable total pressure losses. The performances were compared with the Baseline Strut configurations (BSPI and BSNI). The analysis presented includes the mixing quantifications using Mie scattering signature, flow field visualisation, measurement of wall static pressure and the total pressure loss calculations. The results clearly demonstrated that the proposed strut configurations achieved increased mixing (7-8%) compared to BSPI with increase in total pressure loss (2%). On the other hand, when compared with BSNI, the mixing performance was found to be decreased by 6% with reduced total pressure loss (12%).


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