CFD Modeling of Low Pressure Steam Turbine Radial Diffuser Flow by Using a Novel Multiple Mixing Plane Based Coupling: Simulation and Validation

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Stein ◽  
Christoph Pfoster ◽  
Michael Sell ◽  
Paul Galpin ◽  
Thorsten Hansen
Keyword(s):  
Steam Turbine ◽  
Heat Rate ◽  
Low Pressure ◽  
Cfd Modeling ◽  
Steam Turbines ◽  
Multiple Mixing ◽  
Diffuser Flow ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Pressure Steam ◽  
The One

The diffuser and exhaust of low pressure steam turbines shows significant impact on the overall turbine performance. The amount of recovered enthalpy leads to a considerable increase of the turbine power output, and therefore a continuous focus of turbine manufacturers is put on this component. On the one hand, the abilities to aerodynamically design such components is improved, but on the other hand a huge effort is required to properly predict the resulting performance and to enable an accurate modeling of the overall steam turbine and therewith plant heat rate. A wide range of approaches is used to compute the diffuser and exhaust flow, with a wide range of quality. Today it is well known and understood, that there is a strong interaction of rear stage and diffuser flow, and the accuracy of the overall diffuser performance prediction strongly depends on a proper coupling of both domains. The most accurate, but also most expensive method is currently seen in a full annulus and transient coupling. However, for a standard industrial application of diffuser design in a standard development schedule, such a coupling is not feasible and more simplified methods have to be developed. The paper below presents a CFD modeling of low pressure steam turbine diffusers and exhausts based on a direct coupling of the rear stage and diffuser using a novel multiple mixing plane. It is shown that the approach enables a fast diffuser design process and is still able to accurately predict the flow field and hence the exhaust performance. The method is validated against several turbine designs measured in a scaled low pressure turbine model test rig using steam. The results show a very good agreement of the presented CFD modeling against the measurements.

Computational Fluid Dynamics Modeling of Low Pressure Steam Turbine Radial Diffuser Flow by Using a Novel Multiple Mixing Plane Based Coupling—Simulation and Validation

2015 ◽  
Vol 138 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Stein ◽  
Christoph Pfoster ◽  
Michael Sell ◽  
Paul Galpin ◽  
Thorsten Hansen
Keyword(s):  
Fluid Dynamics ◽  
Computational Fluid Dynamics ◽  
Steam Turbine ◽  
Low Pressure ◽  
Cfd Modeling ◽  
Dynamics Modeling ◽  
Multiple Mixing ◽  
Diffuser Flow ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Pressure Steam

The diffuser and exhaust of low pressure steam turbines show significant impact on the overall turbine performance. The amount of recovered enthalpy leads to a considerable increase of the turbine power output, and therefore a continuous focus of turbine manufacturers is put on this component. On the one hand, the abilities to aerodynamically design such components are improved, but on the other hand a huge effort is required to properly predict the resulting performance and to enable an accurate modeling of the overall steam turbine and therewith plant heat rate. A wide range of approaches is used to compute the diffuser and exhaust flow, with a wide range of quality. Today, it is well known and understood that there is a strong interaction of rear stage and diffuser flow, and the accuracy of the overall diffuser performance prediction strongly depends on a proper coupling of both domains. The most accurate, but also most expensive method is currently seen in a full annulus and transient coupling. However, for a standard industrial application of diffuser design in a standard development schedule, such a coupling is not feasible and more simplified methods have to be developed. The paper below presents a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling of low pressure steam turbine diffusers and exhausts based on a direct coupling of the rear stage and diffuser using a novel multiple mixing plane (MMP). It is shown that the approach enables a fast diffuser design process and is still able to accurately predict the flow field and hence the exhaust performance. The method is validated against several turbine designs measured in a scaled low pressure turbine model test rig using steam. The results show a very good agreement of the presented CFD modeling against the measurements.

Using CFD to Enhance the Preliminary Design of High-Pressure Steam Turbines

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juri Bellucci ◽  
Federica Sazzini ◽  
Filippo Rubechini ◽  
Andrea Arnone ◽  
Lorenzo Arcangeli ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
High Pressure ◽  
Steam Turbine ◽  
Design Tool ◽  
Tip Clearance ◽  
Large Set ◽  
Preliminary Design ◽  
Steam Turbines ◽  
High Pressure Steam ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Pressure Steam

This paper focuses on the use of the CFD for improving a steam turbine preliminary design tool. Three-dimensional RANS analyses were carried out in order to independently investigate the effects of profile, secondary flow and tip clearance losses, on the efficiency of two high-pressure steam turbine stages. The parametric study included geometrical features such as stagger angle, aspect ratio and radius ratio, and was conducted for a wide range of flow coefficients to cover the whole operating envelope. The results are reported in terms of stage performance curves, enthalpy loss coefficients and span-wise distribution of the blade-to-blade exit angles. A detailed discussion of these results is provided in order to highlight the different aerodynamic behavior of the two geometries. Once the analysis was concluded, the tuning of a preliminary steam turbine design tool was carried out, based on a correlative approach. Due to the lack of a large set of experimental data, the information obtained from the post-processing of the CFD computations were applied to update the current correlations, in order to improve the accuracy of the efficiency evaluation for both stages. Finally, the predictions of the tuned preliminary design tool were compared with the results of the CFD computations, in terms of stage efficiency, in a broad range of flow coefficients and in different real machine layouts.

Sequential vs Multidisciplinary Coupled Optimization and Efficient Surrogate Modelling of a Last Stage and the Successive Axial Radial Diffuser in a Low Pressure Steam Turbine

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Cremanns ◽  
Dirk Roos ◽  
Arne Graßmann
Keyword(s):  
Steam Turbine ◽  
Design Process ◽  
Energy Demand ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Flow Simulation ◽  
Low Pressure ◽  
Steam Turbines ◽  
Low Pressure Turbine ◽  
Pressure Steam ◽  
Last Stage

In order to meet the requirements of rising energy demand, one goal in the design process of modern steam turbines is to achieve high efficiencies. A major gain in efficiency is expected from the optimization of the last stage and the subsequent diffuser of a low pressure turbine (LP). The aim of such optimization is to minimize the losses due to separations or inefficient blade or diffuser design. In the usual design process, as is state of the art in the industry, the last stage of the LP and the diffuser is designed and optimized sequentially. The potential physical coupling effects are not considered. Therefore the aim of this paper is to perform both a sequential and coupled optimization of a low pressure steam turbine followed by an axial radial diffuser and subsequently to compare results. In addition to the flow simulation, mechanical and modal analysis is also carried out in order to satisfy the constraints regarding the natural frequencies and stresses. This permits the use of a meta-model, which allows very time efficient three dimensional (3D) calculations to account for all flow field effects.

Advanced Water Droplet Erosion Protection for Modern Low Pressure Steam Turbine Steel Blades

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joerg Schuerhoff ◽  
Andrei Ghicov ◽  
Karsten Sattler
Keyword(s):  
Steam Turbine ◽  
Water Droplet ◽  
Precipitation Hardening ◽  
Turbine Blades ◽  
Low Pressure ◽  
Steam Turbines ◽  
Treatment Facility ◽  
Material Loss ◽  
Pressure Steam ◽  
Steam Turbine Blades

Blades for low pressure steam turbines operate in flows of saturated steam containing water droplets. The water droplets can impact rotating last stage blades mainly on the leading edge suction sides with relative velocities up to several hundred meters per second. Especially on large blades the high impact energy of the droplets can lead to a material loss particularly at the inlet edges close to the blade tips. This effect is well known as “water droplet erosion”. The steam turbine manufacturer use several techniques, like welding or brazing of inlays made of erosion resistant materials to reduce the material loss. Selective, local hardening of the blade leading edges is the preferred solution for new apparatus Siemens steam turbines. A high protection effect combined with high process stability can be ensured with this Siemens hardening technique. Furthermore the heat input and therewith the geometrical change potential is relatively low. The process is flexible and can be adapted to different blade sizes and the required size of the hardened zones. Siemens collected many years of positive operational experience with this protection measure. State of the art turbine blades often have to be developed with precipitation hardening steels and/or a shroud design to fulfill the high operational requirements. A controlled hardening of the inlet edges of such steam turbine blades is difficult if not impossible with conventional methods like flame hardening. The Siemens steam turbine factory in Muelheim, Germany installed a fully automated laser treatment facility equipped with two co-operating robots and two 6 kW high power diode laser to enable the in-house hardening of such blades. Several blade designs from power generation and industrial turbines were successfully laser treated within the first year in operation. This paper describes generally the setup of the laser treatment facility and the application for low pressure steam turbine blades made of precipitation hardening steels and blades with shroud design, including the post laser heat treatments.

Some Aspects of CFD Modeling in the Analysis of a Low-Pressure Steam Turbine

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Filippo Rubechini ◽  
Michele Marconcini ◽  
Andrea Arnone ◽  
Stefano Cecchi ◽  
Federico Dacca`
Keyword(s):  
Steam Turbine ◽  
Computational Cost ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Low Pressure ◽  
Design Tool ◽  
Cfd Modeling ◽  
Navier Stokes ◽  
Sources And Sinks ◽  
Leakage Flows ◽  
Pressure Steam

A three-dimensional, multistage, Navier-Stokes solver is applied to the numerical investigation of a four stage low-pressure steam turbine. The thermodynamic behavior of the wet steam is reproduced by adopting a real-gas model, based on the use of gas property tables. Geometrical features and flow-path details consistent with the actual turbine geometry, such as cavity purge flows, shroud leakage flows and partspan snubbers, are accounted for, and their impact on the turbine performance is discussed. These details are included in the analysis using simple models, which prevent a considerable growth of the computational cost and make the overall procedure attractive as a design tool for industrial purposes. Shroud leakage flows are modeled by means of suitable endwall boundary conditions, based on coupled sources and sinks, while body forces are applied to simulate the presence of the damping wires on the blades. In this work a detailed description of these models is provided, and the results of computations are compared with experimental measurements.

A generic low-pressure steam turbine test case for aeromechanics and condensation

2019 ◽  
Vol 233 (7) ◽  
pp. 953-958
Author(s):  
Christopher Fuhrer ◽  
Marius Grübel ◽  
Damian M Vogt
Keyword(s):  
Steam Turbine ◽  
Numerical Test ◽  
Low Pressure ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Test Cases ◽  
Steam Turbines ◽  
Aerodynamic Damping ◽  
Spontaneous Condensation ◽  
Pressure Steam ◽  
Turbine Design

At the Institute of Thermal Turbomachinery and Machniery Laboratory (ITSM) a generic test case was designed to investigate aeromechanical phenomena and condensation in low-pressure steam turbines. This test case, referred to as Steam turbine Test case for Aeromechanics and Condensation (STAC) consists of the two last stages of a low-pressure steam turbine and is representative for a modern steam turbine design. STAC is intended to serve as a numerical test case to allow studying the fields of aerodynamic damping and spontaneous condensation in low-pressure steam turbine last stages. The geometry of the turbine is made available online at www.itsm.uni-stuttgart.de/research/test-cases/ .

The Influence of Lean and Sweep in a Low Pressure Steam Turbine: Throughflow Modelling and Experimental Measurements

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lutz Vo¨lker ◽  
Michael Casey ◽  
John Dunham ◽  
Heinrich Stu¨er
Keyword(s):  
Steam Turbine ◽  
Field Measurements ◽  
Low Pressure ◽  
Companion Paper ◽  
Test Results ◽  
Steam Turbines ◽  
Performance Measurements ◽  
Cfd Simulations ◽  
Pressure Steam ◽  
Throughflow Model

This paper describes experimental and throughflow investigations on two configurations of a model three-stage low pressure steam turbine. A companion paper describes 3D CFD simulations of the same turbine test data. Global performance measurements and detailed flow field measurements with pneumatic flow probes were carried out to quantify the changes in the design due to the introduction of sweep in the last stator nozzle vanes. An existing 2D throughflow code was improved to enable the present calculations to be completed. The test results have been used in this paper to calibrate the 2D throughflow model, by adjustment of empirical correlation data to match the experimental data on one of the configurations. This throughflow model was then used to examine the influence of lean and sweep on the design. The results identify that throughflow calculations can model the global effects of lean and sweep in the last stages of steam turbines. Some insight is gained on the losses across the span for the different configurations and on the benefits of lean and sweep in reducing the hub reaction in such stages.

Aerodynamic Interaction Effects From Upstream and Downstream on the Down-Flow Type Exhaust Diffuser Performance in a Low Pressure Steam Turbine

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tadashi Tanuma ◽  
Yasuhiro Sasao ◽  
Satoru Yamamoto ◽  
Yoshiki Niizeki ◽  
Naoki Shibukawa ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Steam Turbine ◽  
Low Pressure ◽  
Interaction Effects ◽  
Wet Steam ◽  
Inlet Flow ◽  
Flow Type ◽  
Diffuser Flow ◽  
Aerodynamic Interaction ◽  
Pressure Steam ◽  
Last Stage

The purpose of this paper is to explain aerodynamic interaction effects from upstream and downstream on the down-flow type exhaust diffuser performance in a low pressure steam turbine. To increase exhaust diffuser performance, design data related to the aerodynamic interaction effects from upstream turbine stages and downstream exhaust hood geometry on the exhaust diffuser performance would be very useful. This paper presents numerical investigation of three dimensional wet steam flows in a down-flow type exhaust diffuser with non-uniform inlet flow from a typical last stage with long transonic blades designed with recent aerodynamic and mechanical design technology. Previous studies show that small scale model tests and CFD analyses of exhaust diffusers with uniform inlet flow conditions are not enough to investigate diffuser efficiency and detail diffuser flow mechanism because inlet flow structures including tip leakage flows and blade wakes superimposed from a last stage and several other upstream turbine stages in low pressure turbines affect flow separations that reduce the exhaust diffuser performance. Recent studies by the authors show that the introduction of radial distributions of velocities and flow angles at the inlet section of exhaust diffuser measured in a full scale development steam turbine increased the accuracy of numerical analysis of diffuser flow. In the present study, the computational domain was enhanced and the method of boundary condition definition was improved to increase the accuracy of boundary layer separation and separation vortex generation in wet steam flows. Using the improved method, the calculation results explained the aerodynamic interaction effects from upstream and downstream on the down-flow type exhaust diffuser performance.

Inhomogeneous Multiphase Model for Nonequilibrium Phase Transition and Droplet Dynamics

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. G. Gerber
Keyword(s):  
Phase Transition ◽  
Steam Turbine ◽  
Low Pressure ◽  
Phase System ◽  
Second Phase ◽  
Multiphase Model ◽  
Steam Turbines ◽  
Droplet Dynamics ◽  
Element Discretization ◽  
Pressure Steam

This paper describes the development of an inhomogeneous multiphase model for the prediction of phase transition and nonequilibrium droplet dynamics under transonic flow conditions. The primary application of interest is low pressure steam turbines, where high speeds and complex geometry result in a second phase exhibiting significant droplet size variation, with associated thermal and inertial nonequilibrium relative to the vapor phase. The formulation uses a pressure based, implicit in time, algorithm with finite-volume/finite-element discretization of the conservation equations. For each phase, the velocity, energy state, volume fraction and droplet number are computed. For a two material phase system (water vapor and liquid) a parent and any number of (source based) condensed liquid phases are possible to handle the variety (and complexity) of droplet behavior as found in low pressure steam turbines. The model is tested against experimental data available in the steam turbine community. In particular the influence of inertial nonequilibrium on the phase transition behavior in a steam turbine cascade geometry is examined.

Three-Dimensional Blade Stacking Strategies and Understanding of Flow Physics in Low-Pressure Steam Turbines—Part II: Stacking Equivalence and Differentiators

2015 ◽  
Vol 138 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Said Havakechian ◽  
John Denton
Keyword(s):  
Guide Vane ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Low Pressure ◽  
Cfd Modeling ◽  
Steam Turbines ◽  
Flow Parameters ◽  
Pressure Steam ◽  
Computational Fluid Dynamics Cfd ◽  
Last Stage ◽  
Two Stages

Optimization of blade stacking in low-pressure (LP) steam turbine development constitutes one of the most delicate and time-consuming parts of the design process. This is the second part of two papers focusing on stacking strategies applied to the last stage guide vane and represents an attempt to discern the aerodynamic targets that can be achieved by each of the well-known and most often used basic stacking schemes. The effects of lean and twist have been investigated through an iterative process, involving comprehensive 3D computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling of the last two stages of a standard LP, where the basic lean and twist stacking schemes were applied on the last stage guide vanes while keeping the throat area (TA) unchanged. It has been found that it is possible to achieve the same target value and pattern of stage reaction by applying either tangential lean or an equivalent value of twist. Moreover, the significance of axial sweep on hub reaction has been found to become pronounced when the blade sweep is carried out at constant TA. The importance of hub-profiling has also been demonstrated and assessed. Detailed analysis of the flow fields has provided an overall picture, revealing the differences in the main flow parameters as produced by each of the alternative basic stacking schemes.

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