Three Dimensional Performance Prediction of Advanced Swirl Vanes for Gas Turbine Airblast Atomizers

1993 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald J. Micklow ◽  
Karthikeyan Shivaraman ◽  
H. Lee Nguyen

The performance of high shear airblast fuel injectors for advanced gas turbine combustors is highly dependent on the design of the swirl vanes. The vanes may be of the straight or curved type. Curved vanes usually exhibit lower losses but straight vanes are also used due to lower cost and ease of manufacture. These type of vanes often operate under highly stalled conditions with high total pressure loss and a highly non-uniform exit velocity profile. This can produce poor fuel atomization with a non-uniform combustor fuel distribution resulting in lowered combustor efficiency and increased pollutant emissions. Constant turning curved vanes can also be easily manufactured. Properly designed vanes result in a greatly reduced total pressure loss. The exit velocity distribution is more uniform and higher in magnitude resulting in improved fuel atomization and distribution in the combustor. The present study compares standard helical flat vane performance with a low loss curved vane designed by the author for idle, takeoff and cruise conditions. The results from a three dimensional viscous numerical flow simulation show the curved swirl vane to be clearly superior to the standard flat helical swirl vane. The curved vane has a much lower total pressure loss with a more uniform exit velocity profile. This will result in improved combustor and engine performance and reduced pollutant emissions.

Author(s):  
Gerald J. Micklow ◽  
Karthikeyan Shivaraman ◽  
Insoo Cho

The performance of high shear airblast fuel injectors for advanced gas turbine combustors is highly dependent on the design of the swirl vanes. The vanes may be of the straight or curved type. Curved vanes usually exhibit lower losses but straight vanes are also used due to lower cost and ease of manufacture. These type of vanes often operate under highly stalled conditions with high total pressure loss and a highly non-uniform exit velocity profile. This may produce poor fuel atomization with a non-uniform combustor fuel distribution resulting in lowered combustor efficiency and increased pollutant emissions. Constant turning curved vanes can also be easily manufactured. Properly designed vanes result in a greatly reduced total pressure loss. The exit velocity distribution is more uniform and higher in magnitude which can result in improved fuel atomization and distribution in the combustor. Further, the presence of a shroud is seen to have a major effect on the downstream flowfield. The present study compares standard helical flat vane performance with a low loss curved vane designed by the author for idle, and cruise conditions both with and without a shroud. The results from a three dimensional viscous numerical flow simulation show the curved swirl vane to be clearly superior to the standard flat helical swirl vane. The curved vane has a much lower total pressure loss with a more uniform exit velocity profile. This may result in improved combustor and engine performance and reduced pollutant emissions. The effect of the shroud was seen to reduce the size of the stall cell found in the vane passage for the helical vane. This resulted in a decrease in the magnitude of the axial velocity component in the outer vane passage and a decrease in the circumferential velocity component. This may result in a decrease in the swirl number. For the curved vane however, an increase in the magnitude of all velocity components was found which will result in a higher swirl number and better nozzle performance.


Author(s):  
Gerald J. Micklow ◽  
Michael Benjamin

The performance of high shear axial inflow/radial outflow airblast fuel injectors for advanced gas turbine combustors is highly dependent on the design of the swirl vanes. Curved vanes usually exhibit lower losses but straight vanes are also used due to lower cost and ease of manufacture. These type of vanes often operate under highly stalled conditions with high total pressure loss and a highly non-uniform exit velocity profile. This may produce poor fuel atomization with a non-uniform combustor fuel distribution resulting in lowered combustor efficiency and increased pollutant emissions. Properly designed vanes result in a greatly reduced total pressure loss. The exit velocity distribution is more uniform and higher in magnitude which can result in improved fuel atomization and distribution in the combustor. The present study investigates two curved swirler/nozzle shroud configurations operating at 1 and 10 atmospheres pressure for the same inlet temperature of 293°K. The first configuration was a twisted curved vane with thickness where the turning angle varied non-linearly from hub to tip with a maximum turning at the tip of 70 degrees. The second configuration was a curved vane with a linear variation of turning with 70 degrees turning at the tip. The results from a three dimensional viscous numerical flow simulation of these configurations shows similar performance for all cases investigated. The non-linear twisted vane however, had an approximately 3% higher mass flow rate than the vane with the linear variation in turning for the same exit static pressure at the hub. One problem which existed for all the conditions analyzed was a high loss region near the vane tip. This was due to the interaction with the shroud. As the flow exits the vane row and progresses along the nozzle outer lip, the flow area increases. This condition along with the streamline curvature effect of the outer nozzle lip causes an adverse pressure gradient to be formed in this region. This adverse pressure gradient causes the flow to separate from the vane suction surface. The problem initiated in the region of 70% span and increased in magnitude to the vane tip.


Author(s):  
Steven Farber ◽  
Wahid Ghaly

In typical gas turbine applications, combustion gases that are discharged from the turbine are exhausted into the atmosphere in a direction that is sometimes different from that of the inlet. In such cases, the design of efficient exhaust ducts is a challenging task particularly when the exhaust gases are also swirling. A parametric Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) based study was carried out on non-symmetric gas turbine exhaust ducts where the effects of geometry and inlet aerodynamic conditions were examined. These exhaust ducts comprise an annular inlet, a flow splitter, an annular to rectangular transition region, and an exhaust stub. The duct geometry, which is a three-dimensional complex one, is approximated with a six-parameter model (four geometric and two aerodynamic), which was coupled with a design of experiment method to generate a relatively small number of exhaust ducts. The flow in these ducts was simulated using CFD for different values of inlet swirl and aerodynamic blockage and the numerical results were reviewed so as to assess the effects of the geometric and aerodynamic parameters on the total pressure loss in the exhaust duct. These flow simulations were used as a data base to generate a total pressure loss model that designers can use as a tool to build more efficient non-symmetric gas turbine exhaust ducts.


Author(s):  
Feng-Shan Wang ◽  
Wen-Jun Kong ◽  
Bao-Rui Wang

A research program is in development in China as a demonstrator of combined cooling, heating and power system (CCHP). In this program, a micro gas turbine with net electrical output around 100kW is designed and developed. The combustor is designed for natural gas operation and oil fuel operation, respectively. In this paper, a prototype can combustor for the oil fuel was studied by the experiments. In this paper, the combustor was tested using the ambient pressure combustor test facility. The sensors were equipped to measure the combustion performance; the exhaust gas was sampled and analyzed by a gas analyzer device. From the tests and experiments, combustion efficiency, pattern factor at the exit, the surface temperature profile of the outer liner wall, the total pressure loss factor of the combustion chamber with and without burning, and the pollutants emission fraction at the combustor exit were obtained. It is also found that with increasing of the inlet temperature, the combustion efficiency and the total pressure loss factor increased, while the exit pattern factor coefficient reduced. The emissions of CO and unburned hydrogen carbon (UHC) significantly reduced, but the emission of NOx significantly increased.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Feng Li ◽  
Zhao Liu ◽  
Zhenping Feng

Abstract The blade tip region of the shroud-less high-pressure gas turbine is exposed to an extremely operating condition with combined high temperature and high heat transfer coefficient. It is critical to design new tip structures and apply effective cooling method to protect the blade tip. Multi-cavity squealer tip has the potential to reduce the huge thermal loads and improve the aerodynamic performance of the blade tip region. In this paper, numerical simulations were performed to predict the aerothermal performance of the multi-cavity squealer tip in a heavy-duty gas turbine cascade. Different turbulence models were validated by comparing to the experimental data. It was found that results predicted by the shear-stress transport with the γ-Reθ transition model have the best precision. Then, the film cooling performance, the flow field in the tip gap and the leakage losses were presented with several different multi-cavity squealer tip structures, under various coolant to mainstream mass flow ratios (MFR) from 0.05% to 0.15%. The results show that the ribs in the multi-cavity squealer tip could change the flow structure in the tip gap for that they would block the coolant and the leakage flow. In this study, the case with one-cavity (1C) achieves the best film cooling performance under a lower MFR. However, the cases with multi-cavity (2C, 3C, 4C) show higher film cooling effectiveness under a higher MFR of 0.15%, which are 32.6%%, 34.2%% and 41.0% higher than that of the 1C case. For the aerodynamic performance, the case with single-cavity has the largest total pressure loss coefficient in all MFR studied, whereas the case with two-cavity obtains the smallest total pressure loss coefficient, which is 7.6% lower than that of the 1C case.


Author(s):  
Maxime Lecoq ◽  
Nicholas Grech ◽  
Pavlos K. Zachos ◽  
Vassilios Pachidis

Aero-gas turbine engines with a mixed exhaust configuration offer significant benefits to the cycle efficiency relative to separate exhaust systems, such as increase in gross thrust and a reduction in fan pressure ratio required. A number of military and civil engines have a single mixed exhaust system designed to mix out the bypass and core streams. To reduce mixing losses, the two streams are designed to have similar total pressures. In design point whole engine performance solvers, a mixed exhaust is modelled using simple assumptions; momentum balance and a percentage total pressure loss. However at far off-design conditions such as windmilling and altitude relights, the bypass and core streams have very dissimilar total pressures and momentum, with the flow preferring to pass through the bypass duct, increasing drastically the bypass ratio. Mixing of highly dissimilar coaxial streams leads to complex turbulent flow fields for which the simple assumptions and models used in current performance solvers cease to be valid. The effect on simulation results is significant since the nozzle pressure affects critical aspects such as the fan operating point, and therefore the windmilling shaft speeds and air mass flow rates. This paper presents a numerical study on the performance of a lobed mixer under windmilling conditions. An analysis of the flow field is carried out at various total mixer pressure ratios, identifying the onset and nature of recirculation, the flow field characteristics, and the total pressure loss along the mixer as a function of the operating conditions. The data generated from the numerical simulations is used together with a probabilistic approach to generate a response surface in terms of the mass averaged percentage total pressure loss across the mixer, as a function of the engine operating point. This study offers an improved understanding on the complex flows that arise from mixing of highly dissimilar coaxial flows within an aero-gas turbine mixer environment. The total pressure response surface generated using this approach can be used as look-up data for the engine performance solver to include the effects of such turbulent mixing losses.


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.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-95
Author(s):  
V. KIRUBAKARAN ◽  
David BHATT

The Lean Blowout Limit of the combustor is one of the important performance parameters for a gas turbine combustor design. This study aims to predict the total pressure loss and Lean Blowout (LBO) limits of an in-house designed swirl stabilized 3kW can-type micro gas turbine combustor. The experimental prediction of total pressure loss and LBO limits was performed on a designed combustor fuelled with Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) for the combustor inlet velocity ranging from 1.70 m/s to 11 m/s. The results show that the predicted total pressure drop increases with increasing combustor inlet velocity, whereas the LBO equivalence ratio decreases gradually with an increase in combustor inlet velocity. The combustor total pressure drop was found to be negligible; being in the range of 0.002 % to 0.065 % for the measured inlet velocity conditions. These LBO limits predictions will be used to fix the operating boundary conditions of the gas turbine combustor.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (394) ◽  
pp. 121-128
Author(s):  
Nikolay N. Ponomarev

Object and purpose of research. The object of this work is gas turbine outlet consisting of axial-radial diffuser with the struts and the volute. The purpose is to create a methodology for engineering calculations, taking into account the mutual influence of the diffuser and the volute. Materials and methods. Experimental study of the flow in the models of outlets by measuring total and static pressure in characteristic sections. Calculation of integral and averaged flow parameters in measurement sections. Visualization of boundary flows. Based on the experimental results, development of regression models for the correction factors to be applied in the theoretical model, with selection of relevant factors. Main results. An experimental study of 23 variants of models with a total volume of 112 experimental points (modes) was carried out. On the basis of the experiment, methodology and program for engineering calculation of total pressure losses in the outlets were developed. It was found that the installation of guide blades and radial ribs in the diffuser in order to reduce local expansion angles with the ultimate purpose of mitigating total pressure losses actually does not lead to this result due to the because the flow in the diffuser becomes asymmetric due to its interaction with the volute. Visualization of boundary flows in the diffusers and the volutes has been performed, which makes it possible to identify the locations of separations causing increased pressure losses. Conclusion. An engineering method for calculating the total pressure loss in gas turbine outlet has been developed. The technique makes it possible, taking size restrictions into account, to select the geometry of the flow section that ensures minimum total pressure loss.


Author(s):  
Donghyun Kim ◽  
Changmin Son ◽  
Kuisoon Kim

In the present study, a multi-stage transonic compressor has been analyzed to investigate secondary loss structures and flow interactions in the corner region where the hub endwall and blade suction surface meet. The Detached Eddy Simulation (DES) approach is used successfully with the Shear Stress Transport (SST) turbulence model to directly resolve the eddy structure in the separated region. The SST-DES results for a transonic three stage axial compressor are compared with a RANS analysis obtained using ANSYS CFX. The present analysis indicates that the DES is better in simulating secondary losses and vortex structures than the RANS. With the DES, a large three-dimensional separation is predicted in the stator suction surface and hub endwall compared to the RANS prediction. The flow separation affects adversely the loss characteristics such as increases in the entropy and total pressure loss. The DES analysis indicates that the secondary flow phenomenon of the stator rows is apparent in all stages. It is observed to predict two distinct vortices induced by a three dimensional flow separation in the region adjacent to the suction surface and trailing edge of the last stage stator near the hub endwall. For the front two stages, the DES also predicts strong vortices and flow separation in the same corner region while the RANS analysis fails to predict them clearly. The total pressure loss prediction is concerned, the DES analysis predicts significantly larger than the RANS analysis in the region where the hub corner separation occurs. The DES is also found to predict a periodic fluctuations in the entropy, leading to the instantaneous efficiency variations with maximum differences of about 10% compared with the RANS solutions.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document