Velocity Measurements Downstream of the Impellers in a Multistage Centrifugal Blower

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.


Author(s):  
Gianmario L. Arnulfi ◽  
Diego Micheli ◽  
Piero Pinamonti

The paper presents the results of an experimental investigation on a multistage centrifugal blower, during rotating stall. The test plant allows to change the turbomachine characteristics; in this research the blower has been tested in two different configurations: two-stage and four-stage, with vaneless diffusers. The unsteady flow field inside the blower has been measured by means of hot-wire anemometers. Three single hot-wire probes have been utilised to measure the development of the rotating stall, while a crossed hot-wire probe has been utilised to obtain the instantaneous flow field behind the impellers. The measurements have been done at different flow rate values, including stall inception.


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.


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):  
Dominik Schlüter ◽  
Robert P. Grewe ◽  
Fabian Wartzek ◽  
Alexander Liefke ◽  
Jan Werner ◽  
...  

Abstract Rotating stall is a non-axisymmetric disturbance in axial compressors arising at operating conditions beyond the stability limit of a stage. Although well-known, its driving mechanisms determining the number of stall cells and their rotational speed are still marginally understood. Numerical studies applying full-wheel 3D unsteady RANS calculations require weeks per operating point. This paper quantifies the capability of a more feasible quasi-2D approach to reproduce 3D rotating stall and related sensitivities. The first part of the paper deals with the validation of a numerical baseline the simplified model is compared to in detail. Therefore, 3D computations of a state-of-the-art transonic compressor are conducted. At steady conditions the single-passage RANS CFD matches the experimental results within an error of 1% in total pressure ratio and mass flow rate. At stalled conditions, the full-wheel URANS computation shows the same spiketype disturbance as the experiment. However, the CFD underpredicts the stalling point by approximately 7% in mass flow rate. In deep stall, the computational model correctly forecasts a single-cell rotating stall. The stall cell differs by approximately 21% in rotational speed and 18% in circumferential size from the experimental findings. As the 3D model reflects the compressor behaviour sufficiently accurate, it is considered valid for physical investigations. In the second part of the paper, the validated baseline is reduced in radial direction to a quasi-2D domain only resembling the compressor tip area. Four model variations regarding span-wise location and extent are numerically investigated. As the most promising model matches the 3D flow conditions in the rotor tip region, it correctly yields a single-cell rotating stall. The cell differs by only 7% in circumferential size from the 3D results. Due to the impeded radial migration in the quasi-2D slice, however, the cell exhibits an increased axial extent. It is assumed, that the axial expansion into the adjacent rows causes the difference in cell speed by approximately 24%. Further validation of the reduced model against experimental findings reveals, that it correctly reflects the sensitivity of circumferential cell size to flow coefficient and individual cell speed to compressor shaft speed. As the approach reduced the wall clock time by 92%, it can be used to increase the physical understanding of rotating stall at much lower costs.


Author(s):  
C. Palomba ◽  
P. Puddu ◽  
F. Nurzia

Rotating stall is an unsteady phenomenon that arises in axial and radial flow compressors. Under certain operating conditions a more or less regular cell of turbulent flow develops and propagates around the annulus at a speed lower than rotor speed. Recently little work has been devoted to the understanding of the flow field pattern inside a rotating cell. However, this knowledge could be of help in the understanding of the interaction between the cell and the surrounding flow. Such information could be extremely important during the modelling process when some hypothesis have to be made about the cell behaviour. A detailed experimental investigation has been conducted during one cell operation of an isolated low-speed axial flow compressor rotor using a slanted hot wire and an ensemble average technique based on the cell revolution time. The three flow field components have been measured on 9 axial section for 800 circumferential points and on 21 radial stations to give a complete description of the flow field upstream and downstream of the rotor. Interpretation of data can give a description of the mean flow field patterns inside and around the rotating cell.


Author(s):  
Saad A. Ahmed

Centrifugal compressors or blowers are widely used in many industrial applications. However, the operation of such systems is limited at low-mass flow rates by self-excited flow instabilities which could result in rotating stall or surge of the compressor. These instabilities will limit the flow range in which the compressor or the blower can operate, and will also lower their performance and efficiency. Experimental techniques were used to investigate a model of radial vaneless diffuser at stall and stall-free operating conditions. The speed of the impeller was kept constant, while the mass flow rate was reduced gradually to study the steady and unsteady operating conditions of the compressor. Additional experiments were made to investigate the effects of reducing the exit flow area on the inception of stall. The results indicate that the instability in the diffuser was successfully delayed to a lower flow coefficient when throttle rings were attached to either one or both of the diffuser walls (i.e., to reduce the diffuser exit flow area). The results also showed that an increase of the blockage ratio improves the stability of the system (i.e., the critical mass flow rate could be reduced to 50% of its value without blockage). The results indicate that the throttle rings could be an effective method to control stall in radial diffusers.


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.


Water ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (11) ◽  
pp. 2426
Author(s):  
Xue ◽  
Liu ◽  
Lu ◽  
Gao ◽  
Meng

The rotating stall is an unstable flow phenomenon of pump turbines in pump mode, which is of increasing concern to scientists and engineers working on pump turbines. However, at present, various studies are carried out based on CFD (computational fluid dynamics) simulation, while directly measured data and experimental research on flow fields are seldom reported. By utilizing PIV (particle image velocimetry) measuring equipment, the flow field within the guide vane zone of a low specific speed pump turbine in pump mode was measured. By measuring and analyzing the transient flow field, the evolutionary process of the rotating stall within the guide vane passages was determined. We found that for all three tested guide vane openings, regardless of whether the positive slope appeared or not, a pre-stall operating point was found for each opening in the process of decreasing the flow rate. The analysis of the loss within the flow field indicated that the dissipation-induced loss increased greatly after the rotating stall appeared. The pump performance curves at the three guide vane openings showed an inflection at the pre-stall point. When the flow rate is larger than that of the pre-stall point, the head of the pump turbine dramatically increases as the flow rate decreases. However, when the flow rate is smaller than the pre-stall point, such increases noticeably slows down.The research results showed that whether the positive slope on the pump performance curve occurred or not, instability caused by the rotating stall should be of great concern.


1997 ◽  
Vol 119 (3) ◽  
pp. 624-633 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. V. Marathe ◽  
B. Lakshminarayana ◽  
D. G. Maddock

The objective of this investigation is to understand the steady and the unsteady flow field at the exit of an automotive torque converter turbine and inside the stator with a view toward improving its performance. The measurements were conducted in a stationary frame of reference using a high-frequency response five-hole probe, and the data were processed to derive the flow properties in the relative (turbine) frame of reference. The experimental data were processed in the frequency domain by spectrum analysis and in the temporal-spatial domain by ensemble averaging technique. The flow properties (e.g., pressure and velocity) were resolved into mean, periodic, aperiodic, and unresolved components. A velocity profile similar to that of a fully developed flow was observed at all radii. The periodic data in relative reference frame revealed a small separation zone near the suction surface in the core region. The rms values of the unresolved component were found to be significantly higher in this region. The secondary flow vectors show underturning, radially inward flow in the entire passage with a small region of overturning near the separation zone. The overall flow at the turbine exit was nearly two dimensional in nature except in the zone of flow separation. The unsteady flow data show that unresolved and aperiodic components dominate the unsteadiness in the pressure, whereas the periodic components dominate the unsteadiness in velocities and flow angles. Pressure and velocity fluctuations were moderate, whereas the flow angle fluctuations were found to be high. The overall flow at the exit of turbine was found to be highly unsteady.


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