Effects of Unsteady Wakes on the Secondary Flows in the Linear T106 Turbine Cascade

Author(s):  
Roberto Ciorciari ◽  
Ilker Kirik ◽  
Reinhard Niehuis

In modern low pressure turbines the efforts to increase aerodynamic blade loading by increasing blade pitch and optimising midspan performance in order to reduce weight and complexity can produce increased losses in the endwall region. Airfoils of high flow turning and high pressure gradients between the blades generate strong secondary flows which impair the global aerodynamic performance of the blades. In addition, the unsteady incoming wakes take influence on transition phenomena on the blade surfaces and the inlet boundary layer, and consequently affect the development and the evolution of the secondary flows. In this paper the T106 cascade is used to identify the effect of unsteady wakes on the development of secondary flows in a turbine cascade. Numerical and experimental results are compared at different flux coefficients and Strouhal numbers, the relative differences and similarities are analysed.

2014 ◽  
Vol 136 (9) ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberto Ciorciari ◽  
Ilker Kirik ◽  
Reinhard Niehuis

In modern low pressure turbines the efforts to increase aerodynamic blade loading by increasing blade pitch and optimizing midspan performance in order to reduce weight and complexity can produce increased losses in the endwall region. Airfoils of high flow turning and high pressure gradients between the blades generate strong secondary flows which impair the global aerodynamic performance of the blades. In addition, the unsteady incoming wakes take influence on transition phenomena on the blade surfaces and the inlet boundary layer, and consequently affect the development and the evolution of the secondary flows. In this paper, the T106 cascade is used to identify the effect of unsteady wakes on the development of secondary flows in a turbine cascade. Numerical and experimental results are compared at different flux coefficients and Strouhal numbers, the relative differences and similarities are analyzed.


Author(s):  
Zuo-Jun Wei ◽  
Wei-Yang Qiao ◽  
Ping-Ping Chen ◽  
Jian Liu

As modern turbines are designed with low aspect ratio and high blade loading, secondary flow interactions become more important. In the present work, numerical simulation is performed in a two-stage high-pressure turbine with divergent meridional passage to investigate the transport and interaction of secondary vortex from the first stage rotor within the second stage’s stator. Scale-Adaptive Simulation model coupled with Shear Stress Transport model (SAS-SST turbulence model) is used to capture the flow structures caused by the interaction in the second stator. Coupled with the passage vortex of the first rotor, the shed vortex rotates opposite in the direction and has comparable strength. As both of these vortices convect downstream to the stator bladerow, each deforms into two legs on the pressure and suction sides in the passage. In the passage due to the cross pressure gradient by blade loading, all the low-momentum fluid contained in these vortices moves towards the suction side. Besides, with the existing static pressure gradient in radial direction and vortex dynamics, the suction-side leg and the pressure-side leg move in different radial directions. The suction side leg of incoming passage vortex moves towards the endwall along the suction surface and interacts with the developing passage vortex of the second stator. The incoming shed vortex moves towards the midspan and rolls up the boundary layer fluid from suction surface. Due to the interactions between the incoming shed vortices from the hub and casing and the boundary layer of second stator, two counter-rotating vortices are formed near the midspan. Additional high loss is found there at the outlet plane, which has a comparable magnitude to the endwall secondary loss. The pressure side leg of the incoming passage vortex remains in a certain span with that of the incoming shed vortex and is not engulfed by the developing passage vortex.


Author(s):  
Hoshio Tsujita ◽  
Shimpei Mizuki ◽  
Atsumasa Yamamoto

The increase of blade loading of a turbine cascade makes it possible to reduce the number of blades and stages, and consequently to decrease both the weights and the costs for manufacturing and maintenance. However, strong secondary flows appear in such highly loaded turbine cascades due to the high turning angles which reduce the efficiency. In the present study, the effects of blade profile on the aerodynamic performance of a stationary linear ultra-highly loaded turbine cascade (UHLTC), which will be used for the future gas turbine engines of hypersonic transport, were investigated numerically. The two and three dimensional calculations were carried out for the flows within the three types of UHLTC, which have the same design turning angle of 160 degree and with the different profile of the suction surface. The first was named ‘Original’. The others were ‘Up’ and ‘Down’ which had the longer length of suction surface and the shorter one than that of the Original, respectively. In the present computational code, the governing equations for the incompressible turbulent flow which include the standard k-ε turbulence model were solved by the SIMPLE algorithm. The convection term was estimated by the third order upwind difference scheme. The present computed results were examined by comparing with the experimental results. The total pressure loss, the profile loss, the secondary loss and the blade loading distribution for the three types of UHLTC were compared in detail with each other to reveal the effect of blade profile on the aerodynamic performance of UHLTC.


2012 ◽  
Vol 134 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans-Ju¨rgen Rehder

As part of a European research project, the aerodynamic and thermodynamic performance of a high pressure turbine cascade with different trailing edge cooling configurations was investigated in the wind tunnel for linear cascades at DLR in Go¨ttingen. A transonic rotor profile with a relative thick trailing edge was chosen for the experiments. Three trailing edge cooling configurations were applied, first central trailing edge ejection, second a trailing edge shape with a pressure side cut-back and slot equipped with a diffuser rib array, and third pressure side film cooling through a row of cylindrical holes. For comparison, aerodynamic investigations on a reference cascade with solid blades (no cooling holes or slots) were performed. The experiments covered the subsonic, transonic and supersonic exit Mach number range of the cascade while varying cooling mass flow ratios up to 2 %. This paper analyzes the effect of coolant ejection on the airfoil losses. Emphasis was given on separating the different loss contributions due to shocks, pressure, and suction side boundary layer, trailing edge, and mixing of the coolant flow. Employed measurement techniques are schlieren visualization, blade surface pressure measurements, and traverses by pneumatic probes in the cascade exit flow field and around the trailing edge. The results show that central trailing edge ejection significantly reduces the mixing losses and therefore decreases the overall loss. Higher loss levels are obtained when applying the configurations with pressure side blowing. In particular, the cut-back geometry reveals strong mixing losses due to the low momentum coolant fluid, which is decelerated by the diffuser rib array inside the slot. The influence of coolant flow rate on the trailing edge loss is tremendous, too. Shock and boundary layer losses are major contributions to the overall loss but are less affected by the coolant. Finally a parameter variation changing the temperature ratio of coolant to main flow was performed, resulting in increasing losses with decreasing coolant temperature.


Author(s):  
Marco Sacchi ◽  
Daniele Simoni ◽  
Marina Ubaldi ◽  
Pietro Zunino ◽  
Stefano Zecchi

The secondary flow field in a large-scale high-pressure turbine cascade with micro-holed endwall cooling has been investigated at the Genova Laboratory of Aerodynamics and Turbomachinery in cooperation with Avio S.p.A in the framework of the European Project AITEB-2. The experimental investigation has been performed for the baseline configuration, with a smooth solid endwall installed, and for the cooled configuration with a micro-holed endwall providing micro-jets ejection from the wall. Two different cooling flow rates were investigated and the experimental results are reported in the paper. Different measurement techniques have been employed to analyze the secondary flow field along the channel and in a downstream tangential plane. Particle Image Velocimetry has been utilized to quantify the blade-to-blade velocity components in a plane located close to the endwall and in the midspan plane. Hot-wire measurements have been performed in a tangential plane downstream of the blade trailing edges in order to survey the micro-jets effects on the secondary flows behavior. The total pressure distributions, for the different blowing conditions, have been measured in the downstream tangential plane by means of a Kiel pneumatic probe. The results, represented in color plots of velocity, pressure loss coefficient and turbulent kinetic energy distributions, allow the identification of the endwall effusion cooling effects on location and strength of the secondary vortical structures. The thermal investigation of the effusion system is discussed in Part 2 of the paper.


Author(s):  
Thomas E. Biesinger ◽  
David G. Gregory-Smith

The effect of upstream tangential blowing on the secondary flows has been studied in a turbine cascade of rotor blades. The aim is to reduce the secondary flows and losses, but in the evaluation an accounting procedure for the energy for blowing is required. The experimental results show that the effect of the increasing blowing is first to thicken the inlet boundary layer, giving greater secondary flow and more loss, and then as re-energisation of the inlet boundary layer takes place together with increasing counter streamwise vorticity, the passage vortex is progressively weakened, with a corresponding reduction in loss. Low rather than high angle blowing is shown to be more effective as the jet is kept closer to the end wall, and strong similarities could be obtained with the flow patterns from previous work with a skewed inlet boundary layer. However when the energy for inlet blowing is included, no net gain is achieved due mainly to the mixing loss of the injected air. Overall gains may be achievable, if combined with such features as injection for film cooling.


Author(s):  
T. B. Ferguson

The trends in fluid mechanical development of centrifugal compressors are discussed. The main developments in the impeller are the application of quasi-three-dimensional isentropic methods together with some separation criteria based on two-dimensional turbulent boundary layer theory. Diffusers are sometimes designed on a simplified two-dimensional basis but channel diffusers still appear to be preferred especially at high Mach numbers. Recent visualization studies have shown how far the actual flow in impellers may depart from the actual model and there is a lack of systematic quantitative experimental work on limiting blade loading and pressure gradients both in impellers and diffusers. A summary of gas turbine centrifugal compressors is also made.


Author(s):  
J. K. K. Chan ◽  
M. I. Yaras ◽  
S. A. Sjolander

An experiment has been conducted in a large-scale linear turbine cascade to examine the interaction between the inlet endwall boundary layer, tip-leakage and secondary flows. Detailed flow field measurements have been made upstream and downstream of the blade row for two values of inlet boundary layer thickness (δ*/c of about 0.015 and 0.04) together with three values of tip clearance (gap heights of 0.0, 1.5 and 5.5 percent of blade chord). In the downstream plane, the total pressure deficits associated with the tip-leakage and secondary flows were discriminated by examining the sign of the streamwise vorticity. For this case, the streamwise vorticity of the two flows have opposite signs and this proved an effective criterion for separating the flows despite their close proximity in space. It was found that with clearance the loss associated with the secondary flow was substantially reduced from the zero clearance value, in contradiction to the assumption made in most loss prediction schemes. Further work is needed, notably to clarify the influence of relative tip-wall motion which in turbines reduces the tip-leakage flow while enhancing the secondary flow.


Author(s):  
D. Corriveau ◽  
S. A. Sjolander

Linear cascade measurements for the aerodynamic performance of three transonic High Pressure (HP) turbine blades have been presented previously by Corriveau and Sjolander [1] [2] for the design incidence. The airfoils were designed for the same inlet and outlet velocity triangles but varied in their loading distributions. Results from the earlier studies indicated that by shifting the loading towards the rear of the airfoil an improvement in the profile loss performance of the order of 20% could be obtained near the design Mach number of 1.05. The measurements have been extended to off-design incidence to investigate the effects of incidence on the performance of HP turbine blades having differing loading distributions. The additional measurements were performed for incidence values of −10.0°, +5.0°, and +10.0° relative to the design incidence. In addition, two-dimensional Navier-Stokes numerical simulations of the cascade flow were performed in order to help in the interpretation of the experimental results. The exit Mach number was kept at the design value of 1.05. The corresponding Reynolds numbers, based on outlet velocity and true chord, is roughly 10 × 105. The measurements include midspan losses, outlet flow angles, blade loading distributions and base pressures. The results show that the superior loss performance of the aft-loaded profile, observed at design incidence and Mach number, could also be seen for off-design values of incidence ranging from about −5.0° to +5.0°. However, it was found that for incidences greater than about +5.0° the performance of the aft-loaded blade deteriorated rapidly. The front-loaded airfoil showed generally similar performance to that of the baseline mid-loaded airfoil up to an incidence of +5.0°, at which point its performance also deteriorates significantly.


2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (9) ◽  
pp. 3023-3044
Author(s):  
Xing Xie ◽  
Zhenlin Li ◽  
Baoshan Zhu ◽  
Hong Wang

Purpose The purpose of this study is to suppress secondary flows and improve aerodynamic performance of a centrifugal impeller. Design/methodology/approach A multi-objective optimisation design system was described. The optimization design system was composed of a three-dimensional (3D) inverse design, multi-objective optimisation and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis. First, the control parameter ΔCp for the secondary flows was derived and selected as the optimisation objective. Then, aimed at minimising ΔCp, a 3D inverse design for impellers with different blade loading distributions and blade lean angles was completed and multi-objective optimisation was conducted. Lastly, the improvement in the distribution of secondary flows and aerodynamic performance of the optimal impeller was demonstrated by CFD analysis. Findings The study derived the control parameter ΔCp for the secondary flows. ΔCp can indicate the distribution of secondary flows both near the blade pressure and suction surfaces. As ΔCp decreased, secondary flows decreased. The blade loading distribution with fore maximum blade loading at the shroud and aft maximum blade loading at the hub, coupled with a small negative blade lean angle, could help suppress secondary flows and improve aerodynamic efficiency. Originality/value A direct control method on internal flow field characteristic-secondary flows by optimisation design was proposed for a centrifugal impeller. The impeller optimisation design process saves time by avoiding substantial CFD sample calculations.


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