The Effects of Tip Clearance on Performance of a Heavy Duty Multi Stages Axial Turbine

Author(s):  
Mohammad Reza Shirzadi ◽  
Hossein Saeidi

In this article aerodynamic effects of tip clearance on a heavy duty axial turbine are studied. Three different tip clearances are considered for each rotor. For simplicity, a simple tip profile is assumed and cooling air is not modeled. Aerodynamic behavior of all stages is studied in terms of polytropic efficiency, leakage mass flow, secondary and total losses, penetration length, and total mass flow rate for different pressure ratios. Also three well established correlations of tip clearance loss are compared with CFD results to obtain the best model for performance calculation of such a large-scale turbine. The steady states, viscous and compressible flow governing equations representing the flow field with k-epsilon turbulence model are solved using commercial code ANSYS CFX.12. Useful data are presented to predict the variation of efficiency of each individual rotor, as well as entire turbine, as a function of relative tip gap (k/h). This information may be useable in design and troubleshooting. According to the results, even though pressure drop in rear stages across tip gap is lower than pressure drop in front stages, leakage mass flow rate is considerably high for this LP stages. Consequently, tip clearance losses of rear stages have significant effect on the entire turbine efficiency.

Author(s):  
Nan Liang ◽  
Changqing Tian ◽  
Shuangquan Shao

As one kind of fluid machinery related to the two-phase flow, the refrigeration system encounters more problems of instability. It is essential to ensure the stability of the refrigeration systems for the operation and efficiency. This paper presents the experimental investigation on the static and dynamic instability in an evaporator of refrigeration system. The static instability experiments showed that the oscillatory period and swing of the mixture-vapor transition point by observation with a camera through the transparent quartz glass tube at the outlet of the evaporator. The pressure drop versus mass flow rate curves of refrigerant two phase flow in the evaporator were obtained with a negative slope region in addition to two positive slope regions, thus making the flow rate a multi-valued function of the pressure drop. For dynamic instabilities in the evaporation process, three types of oscillations (density wave type, pressure drop type and thermal type) were observed at different mass flow rates and heat fluxes, which can be represented in the pressure drop versus mass flow rate curves. For the dynamic instabilities, density wave oscillations happen when the heat flux is high with the constant mass flow rate. Thermal oscillations happen when the heat flux is correspondingly low with constant mass flow rate. Though the refrigeration system do not have special tank, the accumulator and receiver provide enough compressible volume to induce the pressure drop oscillations. The representation and characteristic of each oscillation type were also analyzed in the paper.


2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 1225-1235
Author(s):  
Ajay K. Gupta ◽  
Manoj Kumar ◽  
Ranjit K. Sahoo ◽  
Sunil K. Sarangi

Plate-fin heat exchangers provide a broad range of applications in many cryogenic industries for liquefaction and separation of gasses because of their excellent technical advantages such as high effectiveness, compact size, etc. Correlations are available for the design of a plate-fin heat exchanger, but experimental investigations are few at cryogenic temperature. In the present study, a cryogenic heat exchanger test setup has been designed and fabricated to investigate the performance of plate-fin heat exchanger at cryogenic temperature. Major parameters (Colburn factor, Friction factor, etc.) that affect the performance of plate-fin heat exchangers are provided concisely. The effect of mass flow rate and inlet temperature on the effectiveness and pressure drop of the heat exchanger are investigated. It is observed that with an increase in mass flow rate effectiveness and pressure drop increases. The present setup emphasis the systematic procedure to perform the experiment based on cryogenic operating conditions and represent its uncertainties level.


Author(s):  
Nikhil M. Rao ◽  
Cengiz Camci

An experimental study of a turbine tip desensitization method based on tip coolant injection was conducted in a large-scale rotating turbine rig. One of twenty-nine rotor blades was modified and instrumented to have a tip trench with discrete injection holes directed towards the pressure side. Time accurate absolute total pressure was measured 0.3 chord lengths downstream of the rotor exit plane using a fast response dynamic pressure sensor in a phase-locked manner. The test cases presented include results for tip gap heights of 1.40% and 0.72% of the blade height, and coolant injection rates of 0.41%, 0.52%, 0.63%, and 0.72% core mass flow rate. At a gap height of 1.40% the leakage vortex is large, occupying about 15% blade span. A reduction in gap height causes the leakage vortex to reduce in size and move towards the blade suction side. The minimum total pressure measured, for the reduced gap, in the leakage vortex is about 4% greater. Coolant injection from the tip trench is successful in filling in the total pressure defect originally resulting from the leakage vortex without injection. At the higher tip injection rates the leakage vortex is also seen to have moved towards the blade tip. The high momentum associated with the tip jets affects the total pressure distributions in the neighboring passages.


2016 ◽  
Vol 836 ◽  
pp. 102-108
Author(s):  
Mirmanto ◽  
Emmy Dyah Sulistyowati ◽  
I Ketut Okariawan

In the rainy season, in tropical countries, to dry stuffs is difficult. Using electrical power or fossil energy is an expensive way. Therefore, it is wise to utilize heat waste. A device that can be used for this purpose is called radiator. The effect of mass flow rate on pressure drop and heat transfer for a dryer room radiator have been experimentally investigated. The room model size was 1000 mm x 1000 mm x 1000 mm made of plywood and the overall radiator dimension was 360 mm x 220 mm x 50 mm made of copper pipes with aluminium fins. Three mass flow rates were investigated namely 12.5 g/s, 14 g/s and 16.5 g/s. The water temperature at the entrance was increased gradually and then kept at 80°C. The maximum temperature reached in the dryer room was 50°C which was at the point just above the radiator. The effect of the mass flow rate on the room temperature was insignificant, while the effect on the pressure drop was significant. Moreover, the pressure drop decreased as the inlet temperature increased. In general, the radiator is recommended to be used as the heat source in a dryer room.


Author(s):  
Prithvi Raj Kokkula ◽  
Shashank Bhojappa ◽  
Selin Arslan ◽  
Badih A. Jawad

Formula SAE is a student competition organized by SAE International. The team of students design, manufacture and race a car. Restrictions are imposed by the Formula SAE rules committee to restrict the air flow into the intake manifold by putting a single restrictor of 20 mm. This rule limits the maximum engine power by reducing the mass flow rate flowing to the engine. The pull is greater at higher rpms and the pressure created inside the cylinder is low. As the diameter of the flow path is reduced, the cross sectional area for flow reduces. For cars running at low rpm when the engine requires less air, the reduction in area is compensated by accelerated flow of air through the restrictor. Since this is for racing purpose cars here are designed to run at very high rpms where the flow at the throat section reach sonic velocities. Due to these restrictions the teams are challenged to come up with improved restrictor designs that allow maximum pressure drop across the restrictor’s inlet and outlet. The design considered for optimizing a flow restrictor is a venturi type having 20 mm restriction between the inlet and the outlet complying with the rules set by Formula SAE committee. The primary objective of this work is to optimize the flow restriction device that achieves maximum mass flow and minimum pull from the engine. This implies the pressure difference created due to the cylinder pressure and the atmospheric pressure at the inlet should be minimum. An optimum flow restrictor is designed by conducting analysis on various converging and diverging angles and coming up with an optimum value. Venturi type is a tubular pipe with varying diameter along its length, through which the fluid flows. Law of governing fluid dynamics states that the “Velocity of the fluid increases as it passes through the constriction to satisfy the principle of continuity”. An equation can be derived from the combination of Bernoulli’s equation and Continuity equation for the pressure drop due to venturi effect. [1]. A Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) tool is used to calculate the minimum pressure drop across the restrictor by running a series of analysis on various converging and diverging angles and calculating the pressure drop. As a result, an optimum air flow restrictor is achieved that maximizes the mass flow rate and minimizes the engine pull.


Author(s):  
Huijing Zhao ◽  
Zhiheng Wang ◽  
Hongshi Yu ◽  
Chaoyang Jiang ◽  
Guang Xi

In transonic centrifugal compressors, the losses and blockage are increased dominantly by the shock, shock/tip leakage vortex (TLV) interaction and shock/boundary layers interaction on the blade suction side. Therefore, a detailed investigation of shock effects is seriously important to improve the aerodynamic performance and extend the stable operating range of a centrifugal compressor. This paper firstly analyzes the shock structures in the transonic impeller at the design and off-design conditions. It is found that the shock structure is three-dimensional and swept along the span, with the shock becoming normal to the shroud near the blade tip. As the mass flow rate decreases, the swept shock moves upstream, and the shock/TLV interaction becomes stronger, inducing the vortex breakdown at the near stall condition. Then a comparative study is conducted on the flow structures in the transonic centrifugal impeller without the tip clearance (OTC impeller). Compared with the impeller with a tip clearance (WTC impeller), the splitter shock strength in the passage between the main blade and splitter is enhanced and the separation caused by the splitter shock /boundary layers interaction is induced, due to the lack of the blockage in the inducer induced by the shock/TLV of main blade interaction in the WTC impeller. Thus, at a large mass flow rate, the efficiency of the OTC impeller is lower than that of the WTC impeller because the stronger splitter shock induces larger flow separation in the passages between the main blade and splitter. However, at a small mass flow rate, the WTC impeller has a lower efficiency because the losses in the inducer induced by the interaction between the shock and the TLV of main blade are dominant.


2019 ◽  
Vol 213 ◽  
pp. 02080
Author(s):  
Petr Straka

The contribution deals with numerical simulation of compressible flow through the axial turbine stage equipped with the hub-seal. The current flowing from the hub-seal has a major impact on the secondary flow in the hub-region of the blade span. The aim of this work is to found a dependency of the efficiency-drop on the hub-seal mass flow rate. Numerical simulation has been made for configuration of experimental axial single-stage reaction turbine.


2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 96 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. V . E. Barbosa ◽  
J. A. Souza ◽  
E. D. dos Santos ◽  
L. A. Isoldi ◽  
J. C. Martins

Studies related to ocean energy are getting more important lately, once world claims for renewable energy usage. The Overtopping Device is a kind of Ocean Waves Energy Converter (OWEC), which main concept is storing water provided by incident waves above sea level to feed a set of low head turbines. In order to obtain the desired effect, this device contains a ramp which elevates the incident waves toward the reservoir. Present study aims to perform a numerical model of a 2D Overtopping Device by means of OpenFOAM simulations. OpenFOAM is a free open source code which has shown applicability in many areas of engineering. The adopted solver (InterFOAM) is Volume of Fluid based (VOF) according to Finite Volume Method (FVM), these methodologies has been largely used among researchers in propagating waves field. FLUENT (commercial code) is used to verify OpenFOAM's results. Once, the main point of this paper is to present OpenFOAM as a considerable tool for propagating waves studies, it firstly presents a numerical wave verification with analytical solutions (second order Stokes theory). The second section of results presents overtopping time series peaks in 100 s of simulation. Also, by mass flow rate integration, it presents total mas of water climbed to the reservoir. The integration of mass flow rate takes 94 s of simulation (not 100 s) because it is noticeable a pause between two peaks of overtopping at that time. Results show agreement between wave elevation and wave velocity profiles with straight convergence of periods between analytical and numerical waves. Most important differences are found near air/water interface, owed to faster air flow at that region. Generally OpenFOAM and FLUENT results are similar, with converged overtopping time series peaks and their magnitudes too. Similarly, the amount of water marked by both software are close with very similar trend lines.


Author(s):  
Zahir Uddin Ahmed ◽  
Md. Roni Raihan ◽  
Omidreza Ghaffari ◽  
Muhammad Ikhlaq

Abstract Microchannel heat sink is an effective method in compact and faster heat transfer applications. This paper numerically investigates thermal and hydraulic characteristics of a porous microchannel heat sink (PMHS) using various nanofluids. The effect of porosity, inlet velocity and nanoparticle concentration on thermal-hydraulic performance is systematically examined. The result shows a significant temperature increase (40°C) of the coolant in the porous zone. The pressure drop reduces by 35% for γ = 0.32 compared to the non-porous counterpart, and this reduction of pressure significantly continues when γ further increases. The pressure drop with win is linear for PMHS with nanofluids, and the change in pressure drop is steeper for nanofluids compared to their base fluids. The average heat transfer coefficients increases about 2.5 times for PMHS, and a further increase of 6% in is predicted with the addition of nanoparticle. The average Nusselt number increases non-linearly with Re for PMHS. The friction factor reduces by 50% when γ increases from 0.32 to 0.60, and the effect of nanofluid on friction factor is insignificant beyond the mass flow rate of 0.0004 kg/s. Whilst Cu and CuO nanoparticles help to dissipate the larger amount of heat from the microchannel, Al2O3 nanoparticle appears to have a detrimental effect on heat transfer. The thermal-hydraulic performance factor strongly depends on the nanoparticles, and it slightly decreases with the mass flow rate. The increase of nanoparticle concentration, in general, enhances both h and ΔP linearly for the range considered.


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