Numerical Study of Internal Flow Fields in Steam Turbine Stages With Balance Holes

Author(s):  
Chang Luo ◽  
Liming Song ◽  
Jun Li ◽  
Zhenping Feng ◽  
Shouhong Cao ◽  
...  

A new calculation model is proposed to simulate flows in the steam turbine stages with balance holes in this paper. The model describes the flows in a 2.5 stage turbine with focus on the second stage and the corresponding seals, balance holes and disk cavities. The aerodynamic performance of the turbine stages is predicted by using a three-dimensional Reynold-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) solver. The Spalart-Allmaras one equation turbulence model is adopted, and the RANS solver is run in steady mode using the mixing plane approach. In order to analyze the impact of leakage flow on main flow, the aerodynamic performance of the ideal flow path turbine stages (without balance holes and seals) is also calculated. The numerical results show that the total-total efficiency of the turbine stages with balance holes is 1.81% lower than that of ideal flow path turbine stages. The flow characteristics in the seals, disk cavities and balance holes and their influence on the mainstream are described. Finally, the influence of the balance hole diameter and radius crossing the balance hole axis on the turbine stage performance is studied. The variations of the torque, axial thrust and relative efficiency with the diameter and radius are presented respectively.

2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (suppl. 3) ◽  
pp. 669-676
Author(s):  
Di Zhang ◽  
Ma Jiao-Bin ◽  
Qi Jing

The aerodynamic performance of blade affects the vibration characteristics and stable operation of turbomachinery closely. The aerodynamic performance of turbine stage can be improved by using swept blade. In this paper, the RANS method and the RNG k-? turbulence mode were adopted to investigate the unsteady flow characteristics and excitation force of swept blade stage. According to the results, for the swept blade, the fluid of boundary layer shifts in radial direction due to the influence of geometric construction. It is observed that there is similar wake development for several kinds of stators, and the wake has a notable effect on the boundary layer of the rotor blades. When compared with straight blade, pressure fluctuation of forward-swept blade is decreased while the pressure fluctuation of backward-swept blade is increased. The axial and tangential fundamental frequency excitation force factors of 15?forward-swept blade are 0.139 and 0.052 respectively, which are the least, and all excitation force factors are in the normal range. The excitation factor of the forward-swept blade is decreased compared with straight blade, and the decreasing percentage is closely related to the swept angle. As for backward-swept blades, the situation is the other way around. Additionally, the change of axial excitation factor is more obvious. So the vibration reduction performance of forward-swept blade is better.


Author(s):  
Xiaojun Jiang ◽  
Yi Li ◽  
Zhaohui He ◽  
Cui Baoling ◽  
Wenlong Dong

The three-dimensional flow field characteristics are obtained by performing numerical simulation of flow in a lobe pump with twisted rotors. The relationship between the dynamic flow structure and the flow fluctuation is explored. Actually, the viscous incompressible Navier-Stokes equations are solved within an unsteady flow model. The dynamic mesh technique is applied to obtain the dynamic flow structure. By comparing the simulated results of straight rotor with those of twisted rotor, the effect of rotor shape on the flow fluctuation was revealed. Finally, the impact of the lobes number of rotors on flow pulsations is discussed. The results show that there is an intrinsic relationship between the flow fluctuation and the vortex in the lobe pump. The use of twisted rotors can effectively improve the internal flow characteristics of lobe pump and reduce flow fluctuation. With the increase of the number of lobes, the lobe pump output is more stable and capacity has been improved.


Author(s):  
Young-Seok Choi ◽  
Yong-In Kim ◽  
Sung Kim ◽  
Seul-Gi Lee ◽  
Hyeon-Mo Yang ◽  
...  

Abstract This paper describes the numerical optimization of an axial fan focused on the blade and guide vane (GV). For numerical analysis, three-dimensional (3D) steady-state Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations with the shear stress transport (SST) turbulence model are discretized by the finite volume method (FVM). The objective function is enhancement of aerodynamic performance with specified total pressure. To select the design variables which have main effect to the objective function, 2k factorial design is employed as a method for design of experiment (DOE). In addition, response surface method (RSM) based on the central composite design applied to carry out the single-objective optimization. Effects on the components such as bell mouth and hub cap are considered with previous analysis. The internal flow characteristics between base and optimized model are analyzed and discussed.


Processes ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peifeng Lin ◽  
Yongzheng Li ◽  
Wenbin Xu ◽  
Hui Chen ◽  
Zuchao Zhu

In order to make the centrifugal pump run efficiently and stably under various working conditions, the influences of the incoming vortex flow in the inlet pipe on the main flow in the impeller is studied numerically, based on the k − ω SST turbulence model. Some guide vanes with different offset angle were added to change the statistical characteristic of the internal flow in the inlet pipe of the centrifugal pump. Both contour distributions of internal flow and statistical results of external performance are obtained and analyzed. The results show that the existence of vanes can divide the large vortex because of the reversed flow from the rotating impeller at low flow rate conditions into small vortices, which are easier to dissipate, make the velocity and pressure distribution more uniform, improve the stability of the flow in the impeller, reduce the hydraulic loss, and improve the hydraulic performance of the pump. The pump with vanes of offset angle 25° has a small pressure pulsation amplitude at each monitoring point. Comparing with the performance of the original pump, the head increased by around 2% and efficiency increased by around 2.5% of the pump with vanes of offset angle 25°.


Author(s):  
M. Häfele ◽  
J. Starzmann ◽  
M. Grübel ◽  
M. Schatz ◽  
D. M. Vogt ◽  
...  

A numerical study on the flow in a three stage low pressure industrial steam turbine with conical friction bolts in the last stage and lacing wires in the penultimate stage is presented and analyzed. Structured high-resolution hexahedral meshes are used for all three stages and the meshing methodology is shown for the rotor with friction bolts and blade reinforcements. Modern three-dimensional CFD with a non-equilibrium wet steam model is used to examine the aero-thermodynamic effects of the part-span connectors. A performance assessment of the coupled blades at part load, design and overload condition is presented and compared with measurement data from an industrial steam turbine test rig. Detailed flow field analyses and a comparison of blade loading between configurations with and without part-span connectors are presented in this paper. The results show significant interaction of the cross flow vortex along the part-span connector with the blade passage flow causing aerodynamic losses. This is the first time that part-span connectors are being analyzed using a non-equilibrium wet steam model. It is shown that additional wetness losses are induced by these elements.


Author(s):  
P. Sreekumar ◽  
Mahesh K. Varpe

Abstract The aerodynamics design of a steam turbine stage is an agreement between the performance requirements and the mechanical limitations. The design of last stage of the low-pressure steam (LP) turbine is the most complicated because of the blade twist and a tapered blade along with high aspect ratio due to the sharp increase in the specific volume of the steam during its expansion. The choice of higher aspect ratio for increased power generation makes the turbine blade experience the vibration due to lower modal frequencies which depend on the running speed of a turbine. Therefore, the sensitive behavior of these blades is reduced by damping the blade vibrations which comes with the penalty of aerodynamic performance. The investigation reported here discusses the impact of lacing wire and snubber mounted at 70% blade span. Both, the lacing wire and snubber aligned parallel to the rotor axis deteriorates the efficiency by 0.75% and 1.7% respectively. However, the aerodynamically shaped snubber aligned with the streamline direction recovers the efficiency to that of base line. The mechanism of streamwise aligned snubber in containing aerodynamic performance loss is quite interesting and is being discussed.


Author(s):  
Satoshi Miyake ◽  
Satoru Yamamoto ◽  
Yasuhiro Sasao ◽  
Kazuhiro Momma ◽  
Toshihiro Miyawaki ◽  
...  

A numerical study simulating unsteady 3-D wet-steam flows through three-stage stator-rotor blade rows in a low-pressure steam turbine model experimentally conducted by Mitsubishi Heavy Industry (MHI) was presented in the last ASME Turbo Expo by our group. In this study, the previous discussion is extended to the discussion how nonequilibrium condensation is influenced by unsteady wakes and corner vortices from prefaced multi-stage blade rows. Unsteady 3-D flows through three-stage stator-rotor blade rows are simulated assuming nonequilibrium condensation. Flows with a different inlet flow condition are calculated and the results are compared with each other. Instantaneous condensate mass fractions are visualized at different spans and cross sections in the three-stage stator and rotor blade rows. Also the time and space dependent values are plotted and the obtained unsteady flow characteristics are explained.


2016 ◽  
Vol 138 (7) ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus Häfele ◽  
Christoph Traxinger ◽  
Marius Grübel ◽  
Markus Schatz ◽  
Damian M. Vogt ◽  
...  

An experimental and numerical study on the flow in a three-stage low-pressure (LP) industrial steam turbine is presented and analyzed. The investigated LP section features conical friction bolts in the last and a lacing wire in the penultimate rotor blade row. These part-span connectors (PSC) allow safe turbine operation over an extremely wide range and even in blade resonance condition. However, additional losses are generated which affect the performance of the turbine. In order to capture the impact of PSCs on the flow field, extensive measurements with pneumatic multihole probes in an industrial steam turbine test rig have been carried out. State-of-the-art three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) applying a nonequilibrium steam (NES) model is used to examine the aerothermodynamic effects of PSCs on the wet steam flow. The vortex system in coupled LP steam turbine rotor blading is discussed in this paper. In order to validate the CFD model, a detailed comparison between measurement data and steady-state CFD results is performed for several operating conditions. The investigation shows that the applied one-passage CFD model is able to capture the three-dimensional flow field in LP steam turbine blading with PSC and the total pressure reduction due to the PSC with a generally good agreement to measured values and is therefore sufficient for engineering practice.


Author(s):  
Juri Bellucci ◽  
Filippo Rubechini ◽  
Michele Marconcini ◽  
Andrea Arnone ◽  
Lorenzo Arcangeli ◽  
...  

This work deals with the influence of roughness on high-pressure steam turbine stages. It is divided in three parts. In the first one, an experimental campaign on a linear cascade is described, in which blade losses are measured for different values of surface roughness and in a range of Reynolds numbers of practical interest. The second part is devoted to the basic aspects of the numerical approach, and consists of a detailed discussion of the roughness models used for computations. The fidelity of such models is then tested against measurements, thus allowing their fine-tuning and proving their reliability. Finally, comprehensive CFD analysis is carried out on a high-pressure stage, in order to investigate the influence of roughness on the losses over the entire stage operating envelope. Unsteady effects that may affect the influence of the roughness, such as the upcoming wakes on the rotor blade, are taken into account, and the impact of transition-related aspects on the losses is discussed.


2012 ◽  
Vol 233 ◽  
pp. 96-99
Author(s):  
Ya Jun Fan ◽  
Zhang Xu ◽  
Ding Wensi

Centrifugal fan in series with high wind pressure is the key facility of pneumatic transport equipment. To consider the impact of changed conditions on performance of centrifugal fan, internal flow of three-stage centrifugal fan at rated speed in different total pressure conditions is analyzed by CFD software FLUENT6.3 in this paper. Flow characteristics are obtained and the differences of total pressure and velocity distribution in each impeller are analyzed under different conditions, velocity distribution on the meridian plane and section of wind guide plates are compared. Finally, curves of P-Q and P-η at 4600 r/min are forecasted through the analysis of the data, which provide references for reducing impact that condition alteration on fan performance and improving the efficiency of the fan.


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