Mesh Generation for Conjugate Heat Transfer Analysis of a Cooled High Pressure Turbine Stage

Author(s):  
Colinda Goormans-Francke ◽  
Guy Carabin ◽  
Charles Hirsch

The presented work demonstrates the feasibility of quasi-automatic structured mesh generation for all details in the complex cooling system of an industrial high pressure turbine stage, as required by advanced Conjugate Heat Transfer (CHT) simulations. The grid generation software has been adapted in order to quasi-automatically mesh typical cooling configurations such as cooling passages, basins, inserts, solid bodies, cooling holes, slots, and rib turbulators. A multi-domain structured mesh with about 154 million grid points and 12,316 blocks has been generated for the turbine stage. It includes 1,000 cooling holes, over 250 rib turbulators and 150 pin fins for the turbine stage. In order to verify the CFD response to the grid properties, simulations were performed as a first step on the coarse grid level (of 21.8 million grid points) using the 3D flow solver package FINE™/Turbo. The conductivity equation was solved for the solid part of the computational domain using the same temporal discretization scheme as for the flow solver. Parallel, coupled fluid/solid calculations using the k-ε turbulence model were performed on three different configurations: nozzle guide vane alone, rotor-blade alone, and full stage. These results show the feasibility of this approach to mesh generation for use in CHT modeling of the complex configuration of cooled turbine stages.

Author(s):  
Jong-Shang Liu ◽  
Mark C. Morris ◽  
Malak F. Malak ◽  
Randall M. Mathison ◽  
Michael G. Dunn

In order to have higher power to weight ratio and higher efficiency gas turbine engines, turbine inlet temperatures continue to rise. State-of-the-art turbine inlet temperatures now exceed the turbine rotor material capability. Accordingly, one of the best methods to protect turbine airfoil surfaces is to use film cooling on the airfoil external surfaces. In general, sizable amounts of expensive cooling flow delivered from the core compressor are used to cool the high temperature surfaces. That sizable cooling flow, on the order of 20% of the compressor core flow, adversely impacts the overall engine performance and hence the engine power density. With better understanding of the cooling flow and accurate prediction of the heat transfer distribution on airfoil surfaces, heat transfer designers can have a more efficient design to reduce the cooling flow needed for high temperature components and improve turbine efficiency. This in turn lowers the overall specific fuel consumption (SFC) for the engine. Accurate prediction of rotor metal temperature is also critical for calculations of cyclic thermal stress, oxidation, and component life. The utilization of three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (3D CFD) codes for turbomachinery aerodynamic design and analysis is now a routine practice in the gas turbine industry. The accurate heat-transfer and metal-temperature prediction capability of any CFD code, however, remains challenging. This difficulty is primarily due to the complex flow environment of the high-pressure turbine, which features high speed rotating flow, coupling of internal and external unsteady flows, and film-cooled, heat transfer enhancement schemes. In this study, conjugate heat transfer (CHT) simulations are performed on a high-pressure cooled turbine stage, and the heat flux results at mid span are compared to experimental data obtained at The Ohio State University Gas Turbine Laboratory (OSUGTL). Due to the large difference in time scales between fluid and solid, the fluid domain is simulated as steady state while the solid domain is simulated as transient in CHT simulation. This paper compares the unsteady and transient results of the heat flux on a high-pressure cooled turbine rotor with measurements obtained at OSUGTL.


Author(s):  
Markus Schmidt ◽  
Christoph Starke

This article presents results for the coupled simulation of a high-pressure turbine stage in consideration of unsteady hot gas flows. A semi-unsteady coupling process was developed to solve the conjugate heat transfer problem for turbine components of gas turbines. Time-resolved CFD simulations are coupled to a finite element solver for the steady state heat conduction inside of the blade material. A simplified turbine stage geometry is investigated in this paper to describe the influence of the unsteady flow field onto the time-averaged heat transfer. Comparisons of the time-resolved results to steady state results indicate the importance of a coupled simulation and the consideration of the time-dependent flow-field. Different film-cooling configurations for the turbine NGV are considered, resulting in different temperature and pressure deficits in the vane wake. Their contribution to non-linear effects causing the time-averaged heat load to differ from a steady result is discussed to further highlight the necessity of unsteady design methods for future turbine developments. A strong increase in the pressure side heat transfer coefficients for unsteady simulations is observed in all results. For higher film-cooling mass flows in the upstream row, the preferential migration of hot fluid towards the pressure side of a turbine blade is amplified as well, which leads to a strong increase in material temperature at the pressure side and also in the blade tip region.


Author(s):  
A. Sipatov ◽  
L. Gomzikov ◽  
V. Latyshev ◽  
N. Gladysheva

The present tendency of creating new aircraft engines with a higher level of fuel efficiency leads to the necessity to increase gas temperature at a high pressure turbine (HPT) inlet. To design such type of engines, the improvement of accuracy of the computational analysis is required. According to this the numerical analysis methods are constantly developing worldwide. The leading firms in designing aircraft engines carry out investigations in this field. However, this problem has not been resolved completely yet because there are many different factors affecting HPT blade heat conditions. In addition in some cases the numerical methods and approaches require tuning (for example to predict laminar-turbulent transition region or to describe the interaction of boundary layer and shock wave). In this work our advanced approach of blade heat condition numerical estimation based on the three-dimensional computational analysis is presented. The object of investigation is an advanced aircraft engine HPT first stage blade. The given analysis consists of two interrelated parts. The first part is a stator-rotor interaction modeling of the investigated turbine stage (unsteady approach). Solving this task we devoted much attention to modeling unsteady effects of stator-rotor interaction and to describing an influence of applied inlet boundary conditions on the blade heat conditions. In particular, to determine the total pressure, flow angle and total temperature distributions at the stage inlet we performed a numerical modeling of the combustor chamber of the investigated engine. The second part is a flow modeling in the turbine stage using flow parameters averaging on the stator-rotor interface (steady approach). Here we used sufficiently finer grid discretization to model all perforation holes on the stator vane and rotor blade, endwalls films in detail and to apply conjugate heat transfer approach for the rotor blade. Final results were obtained applying the results of steady and unsteady approaches. Experimental data of the investigated blade heat conditions are presented in the paper. These data were obtained during full size experimental testing the core of the engine and were collected using two different type of experimental equipment: thermocouples and thermo-crystals. The comparison of experimental data and final results meets the requirements of our investigation.


2004 ◽  
Vol 126 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles W. Haldeman ◽  
Michael G. Dunn

This paper describes heat-transfer measurements and predictions obtained for the vane and blade of a rotating high-pressure turbine stage. The measurements were obtained with the stage operating at design corrected conditions. A previous paper described the aerodynamics and the blade midspan location heat-transfer data and compared these experimental results with predictions. The intent of the current paper is to concentrate on the measurements and predictions for the 20%, 50%, and 80% span locations on the vane, the vane inner and outer endwall, the 20% and 96% span location on the blade, the blade tip (flat tip), and the stationary blade shroud. Heat-transfer data obtained at midspan for three different thermal-barrier-coated vanes (fine, medium, and coarse) are also presented. Boundary-layer heat-transfer predictions at the off-midspan locations are compared with the measurements for both the vane and the blade. The results of a STAR-CD (a commercial code) three-dimensional prediction are compared with the 20% and 96% span results for the blade surface. Predictions are not available for comparison with the tip and shroud experimental results.


2016 ◽  
Vol 30 (12) ◽  
pp. 5529-5538 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jinuk Kim ◽  
Young Seok Kang ◽  
Dongwha Kim ◽  
Jihyeong Lee ◽  
Bong Jun Cha ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Charles W. Haldeman ◽  
Michael G. Dunn

This paper describes heat-transfer measurements and predictions obtained for the vane and blade of a rotating high-pressure turbine stage. The measurements were obtained with the stage operating at design corrected conditions. A previous paper described the aerodynamics and the blade midspan location heat-transfer data and compared these experimental results with predictions. The intent of the current paper is to concentrate on the measurements and predictions for the 20%, 50%, and 80% span locations on the vane, the vane inner and outer endwall, the 20% and 96% span location on the blade, the blade tip (flat tip), and the stationary blade shroud. Heat-transfer data obtained at midspan for three different TBC coated vanes (fine, medium and coarse) are also presented. Boundary-layer heat transfer predictions at the off-midspan locations are compared with the measurements for both the vane and the blade. The results of a STAR-CD 3D prediction are compared with the 20% and 96% span results for the blade surface. Predictions are not available for comparison with the tip and shroud experimental results.


2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 479-479
Author(s):  
Jinuk Kim ◽  
Young Seok Kang ◽  
Dongwha Kim ◽  
Jihyeong Lee ◽  
Bong Jun Cha ◽  
...  

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