Numerical investigations on leakage performance and flow mechanism of spiral groove seal for shrouded blade in axial turbine

Author(s):  
Jun Xiong ◽  
Yangli Zhu ◽  
Xing Wang ◽  
Haisheng Chen ◽  
Junfeng Wang

Flow field of shroud leakage flow for a single-stage axial turbine has been investigated in this article. The spiral groove seal (SGS) is adopted for shrouded rotor blade to reduce tip leakage and improve turbine aerodynamic performance. A series of three-dimensional (3D) computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations are performed to investigate leakage characteristics and flow mechanism of various configurations with different angle, depth, width, and grooves number of the SGS. The original staggered labyrinth seal (LS) is also calculated for comparison. The results illustrate that small spiral groove angle can create more axial flow resistance; meanwhile, it will increase grooves number existing in the axial direction. Groove depth and tooth width will influence the number, shape, and strength of vortex in the groove. The leakage mass flow can be reduced by 36% and isentropic efficiency of the turbine can be increased by 0.26% when spiral groove angle, depth, and width of the SGS are 1.5°, 1.8 mm, and 0.8 mm, respectively. Overall, the optimal SGS can influence vortex generation and enhance energy dissipation in shroud cavity to reduce the leakage and suppress mixing loss of leakage flow with the main flow to some extent. It can be attributed to the combination of throttling effect and pumping effect of the SGS that realize leakage reduction and efficiency improvement. As a result, the SGS can effectively improve tip leakage flow of shrouded blade in axial turbine.

Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (14) ◽  
pp. 4168
Author(s):  
Botao Zhang ◽  
Xiaochen Mao ◽  
Xiaoxiong Wu ◽  
Bo Liu

To explain the effect of tip leakage flow on the performance of an axial-flow transonic compressor, the compressors with different rotor tip clearances were studied numerically. The results show that as the rotor tip clearance increases, the leakage flow intensity is increased, the shock wave position is moved backward, and the interaction between the tip leakage vortex and shock wave is intensified, while that between the boundary layer and shock wave is weakened. Most of all, the stall mechanisms of the compressors with varying rotor tip clearances are different. The clearance leakage flow is the main cause of the rotating stall under large rotor tip clearance. However, the stall form for the compressor with half of the designed tip clearance is caused by the joint action of the rotor tip stall caused by the leakage flow spillage at the blade leading edge and the whole blade span stall caused by the separation of the boundary layer of the rotor and the stator passage. Within the investigated varied range, when the rotor tip clearance size is half of the design, the compressor performance is improved best, and the peak efficiency and stall margin are increased by 0.2% and 3.5%, respectively.


Author(s):  
Rubén Bruno Díaz ◽  
Jesuino Takachi Tomita ◽  
Cleverson Bringhenti ◽  
Francisco Carlos Elizio de Paula ◽  
Luiz Henrique Lindquist Whitacker

Abstract Numerical simulations were carried out with the purpose of investigating the effect of applying circumferential grooves at axial compressor casing passive wall treatment to enhance the stall margin and change the tip leakage flow. The tip leakage flow is pointed out as one of the main contributors to stall inception in axial compressors. Hence, it is of major importance to treat appropriately the flow in this region. Circumferential grooves have shown a good performance in enhancing the stall margin in previous researches by changing the flow path in the tip clearance region. In this work, a passive wall treatment with four circumferential grooves was applied in the transonic axial compressor NASA Rotor 37. Its effect on the axial compressor performance and the flow in the tip clearance region was analyzed and set against the results attained for the smooth wall case. A 2.63% increase in the operational range of the axial compressor running at 100%N, was achieved, when compared with the original smooth wall casing configuration. The grooves installed at compressor casing, causes an increase in the flow entropy generation due to the high viscous effects in this gap region, between the rotor tip surface and casing with grooves. These viscous effects cause a drop in the turbomachine efficiency. For the grooves configurations used in this work, an efficiency drop of 0.7% was observed, compared with the original smooth wall. All the simulations were performed based on 3D turbulent flow calculations using Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes equations, and the flow eddy viscosity was determined using the two-equation SST turbulence model. The details of the grooves geometrical dimensions and its implementation are described in the paper.


Author(s):  
Cengiz Camci ◽  
Debashis Dey ◽  
Levent Kavurmacioglu

This paper deals with an experimental investigation of aerodynamic characteristics of full and partial-length squealer rims in a turbine stage. Full and partial-length squealer rims are investigated separately on the pressure side and on the suction side in the “Axial Flow Turbine Research Facility” (AFTRF) of the Pennsylvania State University. The streamwise length of these “partial squealer tips” and their chordwise position are varied to find an optimal aerodynamic tip configuration. The optimal configuration in this cold turbine study is defined as the one that is minimizing the stage exit total pressure defect in the tip vortex dominated zone. A new “channel arrangement” diverting some of the leakage flow into the trailing edge zone is also studied. Current results indicate that the use of “partial squealer rims” in axial flow turbines can positively affect the local aerodynamic field by weakening the tip leakage vortex. Results also show that the suction side partial squealers are aerodynamically superior to the pressure side squealers and the channel arrangement. The suction side partial squealers are capable of reducing the stage exit total pressure defect associated with the tip leakage flow to a significant degree.


2009 ◽  
Vol 131 (8) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessandro Corsini ◽  
Franco Rispoli ◽  
A. G. Sheard

This study assesses the effectiveness of modified blade-tip configurations in achieving passive noise control in industrial fans. The concepts developed here, which are based on the addition of end-plates at the fan-blade tip, are shown to have a beneficial effect on the fan aeroacoustic signature as a result of the changes they induce in tip-leakage-flow behavior. The aerodynamic merits of the proposed blade-tip concepts are investigated by experimental and computational studies in a fully ducted configuration. The flow mechanisms in the blade-tip region are correlated with the specific end-plate design features, and their role in the creation of overall acoustic emissions is clarified. The tip-leakage flows of the fans are analyzed in terms of vortex structure, chordwise leakage flow, and loading distribution. Rotor losses are also investigated. The modifications to blade-tip geometry are found to have marked effects on the multiple vortex behaviors of leakage flow as a result of changes in the near-wall fluid flow paths on both blade surfaces. The improvements in rotor efficiency are assessed and correlated with the control of tip-leakage flows produced by the modified tip end-plates.


Author(s):  
Jichao Li ◽  
Feng Lin ◽  
Sichen Wang ◽  
Juan Du ◽  
Chaoqun Nie ◽  
...  

Circumferential single-groove casing treatment becomes an interesting topic in recent few years, because it is a good tool to explore the interaction between the groove and the flow in blade tip region. The stall margin improvement (SMI) as a function of the axial groove location has been found for some compressors, such a trend cannot be predicted by steady high-fidelity CFD simulations. Recent efforts show that to catch such a trend, multi-passage, unsteady flow simulations are needed as the stalling mechanism itself involves cross-passage flows and unsteady dynamics. This indicates a need to validate unsteady numerical simulation results. In this paper, an extensive experimental study of a total of fifteen single casing grooves in a low-speed axial compressor rotor is presented, the groove location varies from 0.4% to 98.3% of axial tip chord are tested. The unsteady pressure data both at casing and at the blade wake with different groove locations are measured and processed, including the movement of trajectory of tip leakage flow, the evolution of unsteadiness of tip leakage flow (UTLF), the unsteady spectrum signature during the stall process, and the outlet unsteady flow characteristic along the span. These data provide a case study for validation of the unsteady CFD results, and may be helpful for further interpretation on the stalling mechanism affected by circumferential casing grooves.


Author(s):  
Tian Liang ◽  
Bo Liu ◽  
Stephen Spence ◽  
Liying Jiao

To extend the current understanding of the circumferential groove casing suction applied to a counter-rotating axial flow compressor, the impact of different axial locations of the circumferential suction groove on the characteristics of the tip leakage flow (TLF) and the corresponding physical mechanisms producing the stability enhancement have been studied based on validated numerical simulations. The results show that the optimal location for the suction groove is at around 20% axial chord, which demonstrated a high potential for reducing additional stall mass flow coefficient with about 8.4% increment in the stall margin. After the casing suction groove was applied, the interface between the incoming main flow and TLF was pushed significantly downstream in the second rotor. The blade loading in the region below the groove, the tip leakage flow angle and the reversed axial momentum flux injected into main flow passage through the tip gap were all reduced, which contributed to the stall margin improvement. Detailed analysis of the tip leakage flow structures showed that the TLF originating from different chord locations played different roles in the stall inception process. It was found to be more effective to improve stall margin and adiabatic efficiency by controlling the front part of the TLF, which was most sensitive.


Author(s):  
R. Dambach ◽  
H. P. Hodson ◽  
I. Huntsman

This paper describes an experimental investigation of tip clearance flow in a radial inflow turbine. Flow visualisation and static pressure measurements were performed. These were combined with hot-wire traverses into the tip gap. The experimental data indicates that the tip clearance flow in a radial turbine can be divided into three regions. The first region is located at the rotor inlet, where the influence of relative casing motion dominates the flow over the tip. The second region is located towards midchord, where the effect of relative casing motion is weakened. Finally a third region exists in the exducer, where the effect of relative casing motion becomes small and the leakage flow resembles the tip flow behaviour in an axial turbine. Integration of the velocity profiles showed that there is little tip leakage in the first part of the rotor because of the effect of scraping. It was found that the bulk of tip leakage flow in a radial turbine passes through the exducer. The mass flow rate, measured at four chordwise positions, was compared with a standard axial turbine tip leakage model. The result revealed the need for a model suited to radial turbines. The hot-wire measurements also indicated a higher tip gap loss in the exducer of the radial turbine. This explains why the stage efficiency of a radial inflow turbine is more affected by increasing the radial clearance than by increasing the axial clearance.


Author(s):  
Gong Hee Lee ◽  
Jong Il Park ◽  
Je Hyun Baek

It is experimentally well-known that high anisotropy of turbulent flow field, which results from the complex shear and rotation effect, is dominant inside tip leakage vortex (TLV). With all this fact, the greater part of the numerical studies to deal with TLV have used an isotropic eddy viscosity model (EVM), and their predictions showed some disagreement with the measurement data. The main objective of the present study is to show the superior ability of the Reynolds stress model (RSM), which can naturally consider the effect of system rotation on turbulence via the rotational production term, over the isotropic EVM for predicting appropriately the complex tip leakage flow in axial type of turbomachines. To achieve this aim, the results obtained from steady-state Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes simulations based on the Spalart-Allmaras model, Renormalization Group (RNG) k-ε model and RSM are compared with the experimental data for two test configurations: a linear compressor cascade and a forward-swept axial-flow fan. This comparative study of turbulence models suggests that the RSM should be used to predict reasonably the complex tip leakage flow, especially in a rotating environment.


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