scholarly journals Aerodynamic Investigation of Guide Vane Configurations Downstream a Rotating Detonation Combustor

Author(s):  
Majid Asli ◽  
Panagiotis Stathopoulos ◽  
Christian Oliver Paschereit

Abstract Any outlet restriction downstream of Pressure Gain Combustion (PGC), such as turbine blades, affects its flow field and may cause additional thermodynamic losses. The unsteadiness in the form of pressure, temperature and velocity vector fluctuations has a negative impact on the operation of conventional turbines. Additionally, experimental measurements and data acquisition present researchers with challenges that have to do mostly with the high temperature exhaust of PGC and the high frequency of its operation. Nevertheless, numerical simulations can provide important insights into PGC exhaust flow and its interaction with turbine blades. In this paper, a Rotating Detonation Combustor (RDC) and a row of nozzle guide vanes have been modeled based on the data from literature and an available experimental setup. URANS simulations were done for five guide vane configurations with different geometrical parameters to investigate the effect of solidity and blade type representing different outlet restrictions on the RDC exhaust flow. The results analyzed the connection between total pressure loss and the vanes solidity and thickness to chord ratio. It is observed that more than 57% of the upstream velocity angle fluctuation amplitude was damped by the vanes. Furthermore, the area reduction was found to be the significant driving factor for damping the velocity angle fluctuations, whether in the form of solidity or thickness on chord ratio increment. This RDC exhaust flow investigation is an important primary step from a turbomachinery standpoint, which provided details of blade behavior in such an unsteady flow field.

Author(s):  
Majid Asli ◽  
Panagiotis Stathopoulos ◽  
Christian Oliver Paschereit

Abstract Pressure Gain Combustion (PGC) is considered a possible solution to increase gas turbine cycle efficiency, due to the lower entropy generation in the combustion process. However, the highly unsteady flow produced by PGC makes it more difficult to extract work from its exhaust gas. Any outlet restriction downstream of PGC, such as turbine blades, affects its flow field and may cause additional thermodynamic losses. The unsteadiness in the form of pressure, temperature and velocity vector fluctuations has a negative impact on the operation of conventional turbines. Therefore, evaluating early turbine design parameters for such applications is of great interest. Additionally, experimental measurements and data acquisition present researchers with challenges that have to do mostly with the high temperature exhaust of PGC and the high frequency of its operation. Numerical simulations can provide important insights into PGC exhaust flow and its interaction with turbine blades. In this paper, a Rotating Detonation Combustor (RDC) and a row of nozzle guide vanes have been modeled based on the data from literature and an available experimental setup at TU Berlin. Five guide vane configurations with different geometrical parameters have been modeled. URANS simulations were done for all guide vane arrangements to investigate the effect of solidity and blade type representing different outlet restrictions on the RDC exhaust flow. Total pressure loss and velocity fluctuation were computed upstream and downstream of the vanes. The results analzed the connection between total pressure loss and the vanes solidity and thickness to chord ratio. It is observed that more than 57% of the upstream velocity angle fluctuation amplitude was damped by the vanes. Furthermore, the area reduction was found to be the significant driving factor for damping the velocity angle fluctuations, whether in the form of solidity or thickness on chord ratio increment. A further study of the flow field details revealed that the vane passages act as convergent divergent nozzles in the unsteady flow field and no compression wave exists upstream. This RDC exhaust flow investigation is an important primary step from a turbomachinery standpoint, which provided details of blade behavior in such an unsteady flow field.


Author(s):  
Steven W. Burd ◽  
Terrence W. Simon

The vast number of turbine cascade studies in the literature has been performed in straight-endwall, high-aspect-ratio, linear cascades. As a result, there has been little appreciation for the role of, and added complexity imposed by, reduced aspect ratios. There also has been little documentation of endwall profiling at these reduced spans. To examine the role of these factors on cascade hydrodynamics, a large-scale nozzle guide vane simulator was constructed at the Heat Transfer Laboratory of the University of Minnesota. This cascade is comprised of three airfoils between one contoured and one flat endwall. The geometries of the airfoils and endwalls, as well as the experimental conditions in the simulator, are representative of those in commercial operation. Measurements with hot-wire anemometry were taken to characterize the flow approaching the cascade. These measurements show that the flow field in this cascade is highly elliptic and influenced by pressure gradients that are established within the cascade. Exit flow field measurements with triple-sensor anemometry and pressure measurements within the cascade indicate that the acceleration imposed by endwall contouring and airfoil turning is able to suppress the size and strength of key secondary flow features. In addition, the flow field near the contoured endwall differs significantly from that adjacent to the straight endwall.


2002 ◽  
Vol 124 (3) ◽  
pp. 508-516 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. D. Barringer ◽  
O. T. Richard ◽  
J. P. Walter ◽  
S. M. Stitzel ◽  
K. A. Thole

The flow field exiting the combustor in a gas turbine engine is quite complex considering the presence of large dilution jets and complicated cooling schemes for the combustor liner. For the most part, however, there has been a disconnect between the combustor and turbine when simulating the flow field that enters the nozzle guide vanes. To determine the effects of a representative combustor flow field on the nozzle guide vane, a large-scale wind tunnel section has been developed to simulate the flow conditions of a prototypical combustor. This paper presents experimental results of a combustor simulation with no downstream turbine section as a baseline for comparison to the case with a turbine vane. Results indicate that the dilution jets generate turbulence levels of 15–18% at the exit of the combustor with a length scale that closely matches that of the dilution hole diameter. The total pressure exiting the combustor in the near-wall region neither resembles a turbulent boundary layer nor is it completely uniform putting both of these commonly made assumptions into question.


2015 ◽  
Vol 137 (8) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lamyaa A. El-Gabry ◽  
Ranjan Saha ◽  
Jens Fridh ◽  
Torsten Fransson

An experimental study has been performed in a transonic annular sector cascade of nozzle guide vanes (NGVs) to investigate the aerodynamic performance and the interaction between hub film cooling and mainstream flow. The focus of the study is on the endwalls, specifically the interaction between the hub film cooling and the mainstream. Carbon dioxide (CO2) has been supplied to the coolant holes to serve as tracer gas. Measurements of CO2 concentration downstream of the vane trailing edge (TE) can be used to visualize the mixing of the coolant flow with the mainstream. Flow field measurements are performed in the downstream plane with a five-hole probe to characterize the aerodynamics in the vane. Results are presented for the fully cooled and partially cooled vane (only hub cooling) configurations. Data presented at the downstream plane include concentration contour, axial vorticity, velocity vectors, and yaw and pitch angles. From these investigations, secondary flow structures such as the horseshoe vortex, passage vortex, can be identified and show the cooling flow significantly impacts the secondary flow and downstream flow field. The results suggest that there is a region on the pressure side (PS) of the vane TE where the coolant concentrations are very low suggesting that the cooling air introduced at the platform upstream of the leading edge (LE) does not reach the PS endwall, potentially creating a local hotspot.


Author(s):  
Lamyaa A. El-Gabry ◽  
Ranjan Saha ◽  
Jens Fridh ◽  
Torsten Fransson

An experimental study has been performed in a transonic annular sector cascade of nozzle guide vanes to investigate the aerodynamic performance and the interaction between hub film cooling and mainstream flow. The focus of the study is on the endwalls, specifically the interaction between the hub film cooling and the mainstream. Carbon dioxide (CO2) has been supplied to the coolant holes to serve as tracer gas. Measurements of CO2 concentration downstream of the vane trailing edge can be used to visualize the mixing of the coolant flow with the mainstream. Flow field measurements are performed in the downstream plane with a 5-hole probe to characterize the aerodynamics in the vane. Results are presented for the fully cooled and partially cooled vane (only hub cooling) configurations. Data presented at the downstream plane include concentration contour, axial vorticity, velocity vectors, and yaw and pitch angles. From these investigations, secondary flow structures such as the horseshoe vortex, passage vortex, can be identified and show the cooling flow significantly impacts the secondary flow and downstream flow field. The results suggest that there is a region on the pressure side of the vane trailing edge where the coolant concentrations are very low suggesting that the cooling air introduced at the platform upstream of the leading edge does not reach the pressure side endwall, potentially creating a local hotspot.


Author(s):  
M. Funes-Gallanzi ◽  
P. J. Bryanston-Cross ◽  
K. S. Chana

The quantitative whole field flow visualization technique of PIV has over the last few years been successfully demonstrated for transonic flow applications. A series of such measurements has been made at DRA Pyestock. Several of the development stages critical to a full engine application of the work have now been achieved using the Isentropic Light Piston Cascade (ILPC) test facility operating with high inlet turbulence levels: • A method of seeding the flow with 0.5μm diameter styrene particles has provided an even coverage of the flow field. • A method of projecting a 1 mm thick high power Nd/YAG laser light sheet within the turbine stator cascade. This has enabled a complete instantaneous intra-blade velocity mapping of the flow field to be visualized, by a specially developed diffraction-limited optics arrangement. • Software has been developed to automatically analyze the data. Due to the sparse nature of the data obtained, a spatial approach to the extraction of the velocity vector data was employed. • Finally, a comparison of the experimental results with those obtained from a three-dimensional viscous flow program of Dawes; using the Baldwin-Lomax model for eddy viscosity and assuming fully turbulent flow. The measurements provide an instantaneous quantitative whole field visualization of a high-speed unsteady region of flow in a highly three-dimensional nozzle guide vane; which has been successfully compared with a full viscous calculation. This work represents the first such measurements to be made in a full-size transonic annular cascade at engine representative conditions.


Author(s):  
Tony Arts

This paper describes the numerical investigation of the three dimensional flow through a low speed, low aspect ratio, high turning annular turbine nozzle guide vane with meridional tip endwall contouring. This rotational flow field has been simulated using a finite volume discretization and a time marching technique to solve the three dimensional, time dependent Euler equations expressed in a cylindrical coordinates system. The results are presented under the form of contour plots, spanwise pitch-averaged distributions and blade static pressure distributions. Detailed comparisons with the measurements described in part I of the paper are also provided.


2013 ◽  
Vol 136 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
C. M. Schneider ◽  
D. Schrack ◽  
M. Kuerner ◽  
M. G. Rose ◽  
S. Staudacher ◽  
...  

This paper addresses the unsteady formation of secondary flow structures inside a turbine rotor passage. The first stage of a two-stage, low-pressure turbine is investigated at a Reynolds Number of 75,000. The design represents the third and the fourth stages of an engine-representative, low-pressure turbine. The flow field inside the rotor passage is discussed in the relative frame of reference using the streamwise vorticity. A multistage unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (URANS) prediction provides the time-resolved data set required. It is supported by steady and unsteady area traverse data acquired with five-hole probes and dual-film probes at rotor inlet and exit. The unsteady analysis reveals a nonclassical secondary flow field inside the rotor passage of this turbine. The secondary flow field is dominated by flow structures related to the upstream nozzle guide vane. The interaction processes at hub and casing appear to be mirror images and have characteristic forms in time and space. Distinct loss zones are identified, which are associated with vane-rotor interaction processes. The distribution of the measured isentropic stage efficiency at rotor exit is shown, which is reduced significantly by the secondary flow structures discussed. Their impacts on the steady as well as on the unsteady angle characteristics at rotor exit are presented to address the influences on the inlet conditions of the downstream nozzle guide vane. It is concluded that URANS should improve the optimization of rotor geometry and rotor loss can be controlled, to a degree, by nozzle guide vane (NGV) design.


Author(s):  
Majid Asli ◽  
Cleopatra Cuciumita ◽  
Panagiotis Stathopoulos ◽  
Christian Oliver Paschereit

Abstract Detonative Pressure Gain Combustion has the potential to increase the propulsion efficiency of aero-engines and the thermal efficiency of stationary gas turbines. Important advances were made in this field, especially in the case of Rotating Detonation Combustion (RDC). Although experimental and numerical studies reported in the literature have significantly increased in number, the major open problem is a lack of efficient turbomachinery to transform the fluctuating potential energy from an RDC into power output. For this problem to be properly addressed, time resolved data at the outlet of an RDC needs to be collected. As a first step, numerical data can be used to generate a geometry for the turbine, which must be validated experimentally. To determine the performance of a turbine vane row, total pressure losses need to be measured. There are several challenges in measuring the total pressure between the outlet of an RDC and the inlet of a turbine vane row. The high temperature values, the distance of the pressure transducer from the outlet of the combustor lead to a lower time resolution of the pressure signal. The confined space is also an issue, allowing for very few options in measuring the total pressure. Another major problem is the shock wave that may form as a detached shock wave with respect to the body of the pressure probe at certain moments in the flow cycle, which leads to measuring a different value rather than the actual value of the flow field. To address these issues, the current study presents a numerical investigation of a guide vane row that was experimentally tested at the outlet of an RDC working on hydrogen and air under stoichiometric conditions. One of the vane rows was 3D printed with a geometry allowing the measurement of total pressure. Static pressure at the outlet of the RDC was also measured. It was observed that the measured pressures are average values in time. Based on these averages, the total inlet pressure and velocity variations in time were reconstructed in an exponential trend, according to the ones reported in the literature and the aforementioned experiments. These variations were set as inlet conditions for transient numerical simulations. Results show that the total pressure amplitude decreases significantly when the flow passes the annulus and the vanes as well. By looking in to the flow field detail, the presence of shock wave in front of the blade is investigated. Additionally, it is calculated that the average total pressure decreases 7.9% by the vane row.


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