Space-Time Gradient Method for Unsteady Bladerow Interaction: Part II — Further Validation, Clocking and Multi-Disturbance Effect
For efficient and accurate unsteady flow analysis of blade row interactions, a Space-Time Gradient (STG) method has been proposed. The development is aimed at maintaining as many modelling fidelities (the interface treatment in particular) of a direct unsteady method as possible while still having a significant speed-up. The basic modelling considerations, main method ingredients and some preliminary verification have been presented in Part I by Yi and He [1]. In Part II, further case studies are presented to examine the capability and applicability of the method. Having tested a turbine stage in Part I, here we first consider the applicability and robustness of the method for a 3D transonic compressor stage under a highly loaded condition with separating boundary layers. The results of the STG solution compare well with the direct unsteady solution while showing a speed up of 25 times. Attention is then directed to rotor-rotor/stator-stator interferences in a 2-stage turbine configuration. Remarkably for stator-stator and rotor-rotor clocking analyses, the STG method demonstrates a significant further speed-up. Also interestingly the 2-stage cases studied suggest a clearly measurable clocking dependence of blade surface time-mean temperatures for both stator-stator clocking and rotor-rotor clocking, though only small efficiency variations are indicated. Also validated and illustrated is the capability of the STG for efficient evaluations of unsteady blade forcing due to the rotor-rotor clocking. Considerable efforts are directed to extending the method to more complex situations with multiple-disturbances. Several techniques are adopted to decouple the disturbances in the temporal term. The developed capabilities have been examined for turbine stage configurations with inlet temperature distortions (hot streaks), and for 3 blade-row turbine configurations with non-equal blade counts. The results compare well with the corresponding direct unsteady solutions.