An Automated CFD Design and Analysis Tool for Inlet-Bleed Systems

Author(s):  
Tom I-P. Shih ◽  
Yu-Liang Lin ◽  
Andrew J. Flores ◽  
Mark A. Stephens ◽  
Mark J. Rimlinger ◽  
...  

Abstract A pre-processor was developed to assist CFD experts and non-experts in performing steady, three-dimensional Navier-Stokes analysis of a class of inlet-bleed problems involving oblique shock-wave/ boundary-layer interactions on a flat plate with bleed into a plenum through rows of circular holes. With this pre-processor, once geometry (e.g., hole dimensions and arrangement) and flow conditions (e.g., Mach number, boundary-layer thickness, incident shock location) are inputted, it will automatically generate every file needed to perform a CFD analysis from the grid system to initial and boundary conditions. This is accomplished by accessing a knowledge base established by experts who understand both CFD and the class of problems being analyzed. For experts in CFD, this tool greatly reduces the amount of time and effort needed to setup a problem for CFD analysis. It also provides experts with knobs to make changes to the setup if desired. For non-experts in CFD, this tool enables reliable and correct usage of CFD. A typical session on a workstation from data input to the generation of all files needed to perform a CFD analysis involves less than ten minutes. This pre-processor, referred to as AUTOMAT-V2, is an improved version of a code called AUTOMAT. Improvements made include: (1) multi-block structured grids can be patched in addition to being overlapped; (2) embedded grids can be introduced near bleed holes to reduce the number of grid points/cells needed by a factor of up to four; (3) grid systems generated allow up to three levels of multigrid; (4) CFL3D is supported in addition to OVERFLOW, two well-known and highly regarded Navier-Stokes solvers developed at NASA’s Langley and Ames Research Centers; (5) all files needed to run RONNIE for patched grids and MAGGIE for overlapped grids are also generated; and (6) more design parameters can be investigated including the study of micro bleed and effects of flow/hole misalignments.

Author(s):  
R. C. Schlaps ◽  
S. Shahpar ◽  
V. Gümmer

In order to increase the performance of a modern gas turbine, compressors are required to provide higher pressure ratio and avoid incurring higher losses. The tandem aerofoil has the potential to achieve a higher blade loading in combination with lower losses compared to single vanes. The main reason for this is due to the fact that a new boundary layer is generated on the second blade surface and the turning can be achieved with smaller separation occurring. The lift split between the two vanes with respect to the overall turning is an important design choice. In this paper an automated three-dimensional optimisation of a highly loaded compressor stator is presented. For optimisation a novel methodology based on the Multipoint Approximation Method (MAM) is used. MAM makes use of an automatic design of experiments, response surface modelling and a trust region to represent the design space. The CFD solutions are obtained with the high-fidelity 3D Navier-Stokes solver HYDRA. In order to increase the stage performance the 3D shape of the tandem vane is modified changing both the front and rear aerofoils. Moreover the relative location of the two aerofoils is controlled modifying the axial and tangential relative positions. It is shown that the novel optimisation methodology is able to cope with a large number of design parameters and produce designs which performs better than its single vane counterpart in terms of efficiency and numerical stall margin. One of the key challenges in producing an automatic optimisation process has been the automatic generation of high-fidelity computational meshes. The multi block-structured, high-fidelity meshing tool PADRAM is enhanced to cope with the tandem blade topologies. The wakes of each aerofoil is properly resolved and the interaction and the mixing of the front aerofoil wake and the second tandem vane are adequately resolved.


1995 ◽  
Vol 291 ◽  
pp. 369-392 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald D. Joslin

The spatial evolution of three-dimensional disturbances in an attachment-line boundary layer is computed by direct numerical simulation of the unsteady, incompressible Navier–Stokes equations. Disturbances are introduced into the boundary layer by harmonic sources that involve unsteady suction and blowing through the wall. Various harmonic-source generators are implemented on or near the attachment line, and the disturbance evolutions are compared. Previous two-dimensional simulation results and nonparallel theory are compared with the present results. The three-dimensional simulation results for disturbances with quasi-two-dimensional features indicate growth rates of only a few percent larger than pure two-dimensional results; however, the results are close enough to enable the use of the more computationally efficient, two-dimensional approach. However, true three-dimensional disturbances are more likely in practice and are more stable than two-dimensional disturbances. Disturbances generated off (but near) the attachment line spread both away from and toward the attachment line as they evolve. The evolution pattern is comparable to wave packets in flat-plate boundary-layer flows. Suction stabilizes the quasi-two-dimensional attachment-line instabilities, and blowing destabilizes these instabilities; these results qualitatively agree with the theory. Furthermore, suction stabilizes the disturbances that develop off the attachment line. Clearly, disturbances that are generated near the attachment line can supply energy to attachment-line instabilities, but suction can be used to stabilize these instabilities.


Author(s):  
Anil K. Tolpadi ◽  
James A. Tallman ◽  
Lamyaa El-Gabry

Conventional heat transfer design methods for turbine airfoils use 2-D boundary layer codes (BLC) combined with empiricism. While such methods may be applicable in the mid span of an airfoil, they would not be very accurate near the end-walls and airfoil tip where the flow is very three-dimensional (3-D) and complex. In order to obtain accurate heat transfer predictions along the entire span of a turbine airfoil, 3-D computational fluid dynamics (CFD) must be used. This paper describes the development of a CFD based design system to make heat transfer predictions. A 3-D, compressible, Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes CFD solver with k-ω turbulence modeling was used. A wall integration approach was used for boundary layer prediction. First, the numerical approach was validated against a series of fundamental airfoil cases with available data. The comparisons were very favorable. Subsequently, it was applied to a real engine airfoil at typical design conditions. A discussion of the features of the airfoil heat transfer distribution is included.


Author(s):  
Zhang Lisheng ◽  
Jiang Jin ◽  
Xiao Zhihuai ◽  
Li Yanhui

In this paper numerical simulations were conducted to analyze the effects of design parameters and distribution of balancing-hole on the axial-force of a partial emission pump. The studied pump is a single stage pump with a Barske style impeller. Based on the original impeller, we designed 7 pumps with different balancing-hole diameters and the partial emission pump equipped with different impellers were simulated employing the commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software Fluent 12.1 to solve the Navier-Stokes equations for three-dimensional steady flow. A sensitivity analysis of the numerical model was performed with the purpose of balancing the contradiction of numerical accuracy and the cost of calculation. The results showed that, with increasing of the capacity, the axial force varies little. The diameter of the inner balancing-hole plays a dominant role of reducing axial-force of partial emission pump, the axial-force decreases with increasing of inner balancing-hole diameter on the whole range of operation, the axial-force of impeller without inner balancing-hole is approximately 3 times larger than that of impeller with inner balancing-hole. While the diameter of outer balancing-hole has a reverse effects compared with that of inner balancing-hole. With increasing of outer balancing-hole, the axial force increases accordingly.


Author(s):  
Ve´ronique Penin ◽  
Pascale Kulisa ◽  
Franc¸ois Bario

During the last few decades, the size and weight of turbo-machinery have been continuously reduced. However, by decreasing the distance between rows, rotor-stator interaction is strengthened. Two interactions now have the same magnitude: wake interaction and potential effect. Studying this effect is essential to understand rotor-stator interactions. Indeed, this phenomenon influences the whole flow, including the boundary layer of the upstream and downstream blades, ergo the stability of the flow and the efficiency of the machine. A large scale turbine cascade followed by a specially designed rotating cylinder system is used. Synchronised velocity LDA measurements on the vane profile show the flow and boundary layer behavior due to the moving bars. To help the general understanding and to corroborate our experimental results, numerical investigations are carried out with an unsteady three dimensional Navier-Stokes code. Moreover, the numerical study informs about the potential disturbance to the whole flow of the cascade.


Author(s):  
Karl W. Schulz ◽  
Tommy Minyard ◽  
William Barth

A three-dimensional numerical method combining solution of the incompressible Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations with a rigid body structural dynamics response has been developed previously to aid in the prediction of the loads and motions of offshore structures. In this paper, we use the tool to compute the hydrodynamic flow around two tandem cylinders oriented perpendicularly to each other. The flow conditions and gap distances between the cylinders are chosen to match a set of water tunnel experiments carried out at the University of Queensland. Comparisons of Strouhal frequencies and example flowfield visualizations are presented between the experimental measurements and associated CFD results.


Author(s):  
Shahrokh Shahpar

A new approach to three-dimensional design of turbomachinery blades is presented. A number of heuristic and gradient based optimisers are used in conjunction with a linear sensitivity analysis tool, FAITH, to re-design a turbine nozzle guide vane. A novel linear approach is used to eliminate the large computational costs usually associated with function evaluations which are essentially solutions to the Navier-Stokes equations. Results are compared with those obtained previously from the inverse design mode of FAITH. With the present approach, it is shown that nonlinear complicated cost functions can be reduced significantly and aerodynamic and geometrical constraints can be handled easily and efficiently.


Author(s):  
Hong Won Kim ◽  
Jae Hoon Chung ◽  
Hyo Seong Lee ◽  
Min Ouk Choi

The primary design goal of a compressor is focused on improving efficiency. Secondary objective is to widen the compressor’s operating range. This paper presents a numerical and experimental investigation of the influence of the bleed slot to enlarge operating range for the 1.2MW class centrifugal compressor installed in a turbocharger. The main design parameters of the bleed slot casing are upstream slot position, inlet pipe slope, downstream slot position and width. The DOE (design of experiment) method was carried out to optimize the casing design. Numerical analyses were done by the commercial code ANSYS-CFX based on the three dimensional Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations. From the analysis, as the downstream slot position and width are smaller and upstream position is located away from impeller inlet, efficiency and pressure ratio are increased. Experimental works were done with and without the bleed slot casing. The simulation results were in good agreement with the test data. In case without the bleed slot casing, the surge margin value came out to be only 11.8% but with the optimized bleed slot design, the surge margin reached 23%. Therefore, the surge margin increase of 11.2% was achieved.


Author(s):  
Marcello Manna ◽  
Raffaele Tuccillo

The authors present an optimization strategy applied to decelerating cascades, with the combined use of a Navier-Stokes flow solver, correlation functions and a gradient based optimization method. In the initial stages of the searching the configurations proposed by the optimizer are mainly investigated with a semi-empirical analysis tool so to provide the flow solver with an improved initial guess. In the later stages the optimizer directly controls the flow solver. The objective of the optimization is two fold: determining the geometrical characteristics of the cascade yielding the best aerodynamic performances, and defining an appropriate cost function accounting for optimality conditions in a more general sense. The method is applied to blade profiles of the C4 type, whose geometrical characteristics are determined as a function of a few parameters (typically the camber angle, the maximum thickness to chord ratio, and the chord). By doing so the number of design parameters is substantially reduced, and the validity of the present methodology is correctly demonstrated, without loss of generality, with a limited computational effort. The examples deal with the design of decelerating cascades realizing considerable flow turning both in subsonic and transonic regimes and demonstrate the potential of the method.


Author(s):  
Lukas Benjamin Inhestern ◽  
James Braun ◽  
Guillermo Paniagua ◽  
José Ramón Serrano Cruz

Abstract New compact engine architectures such as pressure gain combustion require ad-hoc turbomachinery to ensure an adequate range of operation with high performance. A critical factor for supersonic turbines is to ensure the starting of the flow passages, which limits the flow turning and airfoil thickness. Radial outflow turbines inherently increase the cross section along the flow path, which holds great potential for high turning of supersonic flow with a low stage number and guarantees a compact design. First the preliminary design space is described. Afterwards a differential evolution multi-objective optimization with 12 geometrical design parameters is deducted. With the design tool AutoBlade 10.1, 768 geometries were generated and hub, shroud, and blade camber line were designed by means of Bezier curves. Outlet radius, passage height, and axial location of the outlet were design variables as well. Structured meshes with around 3.7 million cells per passage were generated. Steady three dimensional Reynolds averaged Navier Stokes (RANS) simulations, enclosed by the k-omega SST turbulence model were solved by the commercial solver CFD++. The geometry was optimized towards low entropy and high power output. To prove the functionality of the new turbine concept and optimization, a full wheel unsteady RANS simulation of the optimized geometry exposed to a nozzled rotating detonation combustor (RDC) has been performed and the advantageous flow patterns of the optimization were also observed during transient operation.


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