Investigations on the Sealing Effectiveness and Unsteady Flow Field of 1.5-Stage Turbine Rim Seal

Author(s):  
Shuxian Cheng ◽  
Zhigang Li ◽  
Jun Li

This paper presents a numerical investigation on the sealing effectiveness and unsteady flow field of a 1.5-stage turbine with the front and aft wheel-space cavities. The sealing effectiveness and flow structure are studied by solving three-dimensional unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (URANS) equations and shear stress transfer (SST) turbulence model. The numerical pressure and swirl ratio distributions in cavities with two computational models are compared with experimental data to determine the position of stationary/rotating domain interface. The time-averaged mainstream pressure distribution and sealing effectiveness of the rim seal at the front and aft cavities are studied by the steady and unsteady calculations. The unsteady results agree well with experimental data by comparison of the steady calculations. The effects of coolant flow rates on the sealing effectiveness and the flow field of the rim seal at the front and aft cavities are investigated. The obtained results show that the sealing effectiveness of the rim seal at the aft cavity is much larger than that of the rim seal at the front cavity at the same coolant flow rate. The less mainstream pressure fluctuation near the aft rim seal clearance and the clockwise vortex due to the pumping effect in the aft rim seal leads to this result. The mainstream pressure fluctuation downstream of the blade and the sealing effectiveness of the rim seal at the aft cavity under five operating conditions are computed. It shows that the square root of the mainstream pressure fluctuation amplitude downstream of the blade is proportional to the mainstream flow rate. The increase of the mainstream flow results in gradual decrease of the sealing effectiveness of the rim seal at the aft cavity.

1994 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. L. Amulfi ◽  
D. Micheli ◽  
P. Pinamonti

The paper presents the results of an experimental investigation on a four-stage centrifugal blower, having the aim of obtaining an accurate description of the flow field behind the impellers in several operative conditions and for different geometrical configurations. Actually, the test plant allows to change the turbomachinery characteristics assembling one, two, three or four stages and three different types of diffusers. In this first research step, the blower has been tested in the four-stage vaneless diffuser configuration. The unsteady flow field behind the impellers and in the diffusers has been measured by means of a hot-wire anemometer. A Phase Locked Ensemble Averaging Technique has been utilised to obtain the relative flow field from the instantaneous signals of the stationary hot-wire probes. Several detailed measurements sets have been performed using both single and crossed hot-wire probe, to obtain the velocity vectors and turbulence trends, just behind the blower impellers and in several radial positions of the vaneless diffusers. These measurements have been done at different flow rate conditions, covering unsteady flow rate phenomena (rotating stall) too. The results obtained allowed to get a detailed flow field analysis in the multistage centrifugal blower, in relation to the geometrical configuration and to the differing operating conditions.


1995 ◽  
Vol 117 (4) ◽  
pp. 593-601 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. L. Arnulfi ◽  
D. Micheli ◽  
P. Pinamonti

The paper presents the results of an experimental investigation on a four-stage centrifugal blower, having the aim of obtaining an accurate description of the flow field behind the impellers in several operative conditions and for different geometric configurations. Actually, the test plant allows one to change the turbomachinery characteristics assembling one, two, three, or four stages and three different types of diffuser. In this first research step, the blower has been tested in the four-stage vaneless diffuser configuration. The unsteady flow field behind the impellers and in the diffusers has been measured by means of a hot-wire anemometer. A phase-locked ensemble-averaging technique has been utilized to obtain the relative flow field from the instantaneous signals of the stationary hot-wire probes. Several detailed measurement sets have been performed using both single and crossed hot-wire probes, to obtain the velocity vectors and turbulence trends, just behind the blower impellers and in several radial positions of the vaneless diffusers. These measurements have been done at different flow rate conditions, covering unsteady flow rate phenomena (rotating stall) also. The results obtained allowed us to get a detailed flow field analysis in the multistage centrifugal blower, in relation to the geometric configuration and to the differing operating conditions.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (11) ◽  
pp. 4941
Author(s):  
Fan Yang ◽  
Yiqi Zhang ◽  
Yao Yuan ◽  
Chao Liu ◽  
Zhongbin Li ◽  
...  

In order to study the variation law of the flow field and pressure fluctuation in the hump section of the siphon outlet conduit, the flow field characteristics and frequency spectrum characteristics of the flow field were analyzed by combining a physical model test and numerical simulation under the conditions of the interaction between the axial flow pump and siphon outlet conduit, and the influence of the residual circulation at the outlet of the guide vane on the siphon outlet flow was investigated. Based on the influence of the flow field and hydraulic loss in the conduit, the equivalent surface method based on the Q criterion was used to analyze the vortex structure in the siphon outlet conduit and to analyze the internal vortex state. The results showed that with the increase of the flow rate, the intensity of the vortices in the cross-section of the hump section of the siphon outlet conduit decreased gradually, the average velocity circulation decreased gradually and the axial velocity distribution uniformity increased and tended to be stable; water flow stratification existed under three characteristic conditions with no circulation, and the hydraulic loss was greater with the circulation flow while it had a circulation under the small flow condition. Under the low flow rate conditions, the hydraulic loss was 6.6 times higher under the condition of circulation than without. Under a high flow condition, it was 1.3 times. Under the condition of a small flow rate, the vortex structure was distributed centrally at the inlet of the flow conduit, and under the other two characteristic conditions, the vortex structure mostly appeared as a strip; the pressure fluctuation in the hump section had obvious periodicity, and with the increase of the flow rate, the maximum pressure fluctuation amplitude in the hump section decreased gradually; with the decrease of the rotational speed, the pressure amplitude at the same measuring point in the hump section decreased gradually and at the optimum condition. Under the following conditions, the mean value of the pressure amplitude at the top of the hump section was reduced by 69.63%, and the mean value of the pressure amplitude at the bottom of the hump section was reduced by 63.5%. Under all the calculation conditions, the main frequency of pulsation at each measuring point of the hump section was twice the frequency of the rotation.


Author(s):  
Jun Liu ◽  
Qiang Du ◽  
Guang Liu ◽  
Pei Wang ◽  
Hongrui Liu ◽  
...  

To increase the power output without adding additional stages, ultra-high bypass ratio engine, which has larger diameter low pressure turbine, attracts more and more attention because of its huge advantage. This tendency will lead to aggressive (high diffusion) intermediate turbine duct design. Much work has been done to investigate flow mechanisms in this kind of duct as well as its design criterion with numerical and experimental methods. Usually intermediate turbine duct simplified from real engine structure was adopted with upstream and downstream blades. However, cavity purge mass flow exists to disturb the duct flow field in real engine to change its performance. Naturally, the wall vortex pairs would develop in different ways. In addition to that, purge flow rate changes at different engine representative operating conditions. This paper deals with the influence of turbine purge flow on the aerodynamic performance of an aggressive intermediate turbine duct. The objective is to reveal the physical mechanism of purge flow ejected from the wheel-space and its effects on the duct flow field. Ten cases with and without cavity are simulated simultaneously. On one hand, the influence of cavity structure without purge flow on the flow field inside duct could be discussed. On the other hand, the effect of purge flow rate on flow field could be analyzed to investigate the mechanisms at different engine operating conditions. According to this paper, cavity structure is beneficial for pressure loss. And the influence concentrates near hub and duct inlet.


Author(s):  
M. Cao ◽  
K. W. Wang ◽  
L. DeVries ◽  
Y. Fujii ◽  
W. E. Tobler ◽  
...  

A conventional automatic transmission (AT) hydraulic control system includes many spool-type valves that have highly asymmetric flow geometry. An accurate analysis of their flow fields typically requires a time-consuming computational fluid dynamics (CFD) technique. A simplified flow field model that is based on a lumped geometry is computationally efficient. However, it often fails to account for asymmetric flow characteristics, leading to an inaccurate analysis. In this work, a new hydraulic valve fluid field model is developed based on a non-dimensional neural network (NDANN) to provide an accurate and numerically efficient tool in AT control system design applications. A “grow-and-trim” procedure is proposed to identify critical non-dimensional inputs and optimize the network architecture. A hydraulic valve testing bench is designed and built to provide data for neural network model development. NDANN-based fluid force and flow rate estimator are established based on the experimental data. The NDANN models provide more accurate predictions of flow force and flow rates under broad operating conditions compared with conventional lumped flow field models. The NDANN fluid field estimator also exhibits input-output scalability. This capability allows the NDANN model to estimate the fluid force and flow rate even when the design geometry parameters are outside the range of the training data.


Author(s):  
Eduardo Blanco ◽  
Rau´l Barrio ◽  
Jorge Parrondo ◽  
Jose´ Gonza´lez ◽  
Joaqui´n Ferna´ndez

A study is presented on the numerical computation of the unsteady flow through a single suction and single volute centrifugal pump equipped with three impellers of different outlet diameter. Computations were performed by means of the Fluent code, solving the 3D URANS equations. The study was focused on the effect of varying the impeller-volute radial gap on the flow perturbations associated to the fluid-dynamic blade-tongue interaction. In order to contrast the numerical predictions, an experimental series of tests was conducted for the pump with the bigger impeller, to obtain pressure fluctuation data along the volute front wall. Finally, the results from the numerical simulations were used to compute the radial forces at the blade passing frequency, as a function of flow-rate and blade-tongue radial gap.


Author(s):  
Francois G. Louw ◽  
Theodor W. von Backström ◽  
Sybrand J. van der Spuy

Large axial flow fans are used in forced draft air cooled heat exchangers (ACHEs). Previous studies have shown that adverse operating conditions cause certain sectors of the fan, or the fan as a whole to operate at very low flow rates, thereby reducing the cooling effectiveness of the ACHE. The present study is directed towards the experimental and numerical analyses of the flow in the vicinity of an axial flow fan during low flow rates. This is done to obtain the global flow structure up and downstream of the fan. A near-free-vortex fan, designed for specific application in ACHEs, is used for the investigation. Experimental fan testing was conducted in a British Standard 848, type A fan test facility, to obtain the fan characteristic. Both steady-state and time-dependent numerical simulations were performed, depending on the operating condition of the fan, using the Realizable k-ε turbulence model. Good agreement is found between the numerically and experimentally obtained fan characteristic data. Using data from the numerical simulations, the time and circumferentially averaged flow field is presented. At the design flow rate the downstream fan jet mainly moves in the axial and tangential direction, as expected for a free-vortex design criteria, with a small amount of radial flow that can be observed. As the flow rate through the fan is decreased, it is evident that the down-stream fan jet gradually shifts more diagonally outwards, and the region where reverse flow occur between the fan jet and the fan rotational axis increases. At very low flow rates the flow close to the tip reverses through the fan, producing a small recirculation zone as well as swirl at certain locations upstream of the fan.


Author(s):  
Yan Jin ◽  
Chao Liu ◽  
Jiren Zhou ◽  
Fangping Tang

Submersible tubular pump is particularly suitable for ultra-low head (net head less than 2 m) pumping station which can reduce the excavation depth, lower engine room height, simplify hydraulic structure, and save civil engineering costs. Submersible tubular pump with smaller motor unit can reduce the flow resistance. The flow field inside the submersible tubular pump is simulated in a commercial computation fluid dynamics (CFD) code FLUENT. The RNG k-ε turbulent model and SIMPLE algorithm are applied to analyze the full passage of a submersible tubular pump, the performance of pump such as head, shaft power and efficiency are predicted based on the calculation of different operating conditions. The simulations are carried out over a wide range of operating points, from 0.8 of the reference mass flow rate at the best efficiency point (BEP) to the 1.28 of the BEP flow rate at the same rotating speed. For verifying the accuracy and reliability of the calculation results, a model test is conducted. The comparison of simulation results and the experiment data show that the calculation performances are agree with the experiment results in the high efficiency area and large discharge condition, but in the condition of low discharge, it exists deviations between the two results. Compare with the numerical simulation and experiment, which can provide more evidences for the hydraulic performance prediction and optimization design of submersible tubular pump pumping system.


2011 ◽  
Vol 133 (10) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhifeng Yao ◽  
Fujun Wang ◽  
Lixia Qu ◽  
Ruofu Xiao ◽  
Chenglian He ◽  
...  

Pressure fluctuation is the primary reason for unstable operations of double-suction centrifugal pumps. By using flush mounted pressure transducers in the semispiral suction chamber and the volute casing of a double-suction pump, the pressure fluctuation signals were obtained and recorded at various operating conditions. Spectral analyses were performed on the pressure fluctuation signals in both frequency domain and time-frequency domain based on fast Fourier transform (FFT) and an adaptive optimal-kernel time-frequency representation (AOK TFR). The results show that pressure fluctuations at the impeller rotating frequency and some lower frequencies dominated in the semispiral suction chamber. Pressure fluctuations at the blade passing frequency, the impeller rotating frequency, and their harmonic frequencies were identified in the volute casing. The amplitude of pressure fluctuation at the blade passing frequency significantly increased when the flow rate deviated from the design flow rate. At 107% of the design flow rate, the amplitude increased more than 254% than that at the design flow rate. The time-frequency characteristics of these pressure fluctuations were affected greatly by both operating conditions and measurement locations. At partial flow rates the pulsation had a great irregularity and the amplitudes at the investigated frequencies were much larger than ones at the design flow rate. An asymmetrical pressure fluctuation structure in the volute casing was observed at all flow rates. The pulsation behavior at the blade passing frequency was the most prominent near the volute tongue zone, and the pressure waves propagated in both the radial and circumferential directions.


Author(s):  
Xi Shen ◽  
Desheng Zhang ◽  
Bin Xu ◽  
Ruijie Zhao ◽  
Yongxin Jin ◽  
...  

In this paper, the large eddy simulation is utilized to simulate the flow field in a mixed-flow pump based on the standard Smagorinsky subgrid scale model, which is combined with the experiments to investigate pressure fluctuations under low flow conditions. The experimental results indicated that the amplitude of fluctuation at the impeller inlet is the highest, and increases with the reduction of the flow rate. The main frequencies of pressure fluctuation at the impeller inlet, impeller outlet, and vane inlet are blades passing frequency, while the main frequency at the vane outlet changes with the flow rate. The results of the simulation showed that the axial plane velocity at impeller inlet undergoes little change under 0.8 Qopt. In case of 0.4 Qopt, however, the flow field at impeller inlet becomes complicated with the axial plane velocity changing significantly. The flow separation is generated at the leading edge of the suction surface at t* = 0.0416 under 0.4 Qopt, which is caused by the increase of the incidence angle and the influence of the tip leakage flow. When the impeller rotates from t* = 0.0416 to t* = 0.1249, the flow separation intensified and the swirling strength of the separation vortex is gradually increased, leading to the reduction of the static pressure, the rise of adverse pressure gradient, and the generation of backflow. The static pressure at the leading edge of the impeller recovers gradually until the backflow is reached. In addition, the flow separation is the main reason for the intensification of the pressure fluctuation.


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