Experimental and numerical investigations of hole injection on the suction side throat of transonic turbine vanes in a cascade with trailing edge injection

Author(s):  
Jie Gao ◽  
Ming Wei ◽  
Yunning Liu ◽  
Qun Zheng ◽  
Ping Dong

Trailing-edge mixing flows associated with coolant injection are complex, in particular at transonic flows, and result in significant aerodynamics losses. The objective of this paper is to evaluate the impacts of hole injection near the suction side throat on shock wave control and aerodynamic losses. A series of tests and calculations on effects of hole injection on the suction-side throat of a high-pressure turbine vane cascade with and without trailing-edge injection were conducted. Wake traverses with a five-hole probe and tests of pressure distributions on the turbine profile were taken for total injection mass flow ratios of 0% and 1.2% under test Mach numbers of 0.7, 0.78, and 0.87. Meantime, numerical predictions are carried out for exit isentropic Mach numbers of 0.7, 0.78, 0.87, and 1.1 and hole-injection mass flow ratios of 0%, 0.17%, 0.3%, and 0.89%. Numerical predictions show a reasonable agreement with the experimental data, and wake total pressure losses and flow angles as well as pressure distributions on the turbine profile were compared to calculations without hole injection, indicating a significant effect of hole injection on the profile wake development and its blockage effect on the shock-wave flow in the vane cascade passage. At subsonic flows, the hole injection on the suction side throat thickens the suction-side boundary layer, and increases the flow mixing, thus causing increased wake losses and flow angles. At transonic flows, while the trailing-edge injection reduces the strength of the shock wave at the trailing-edge pressure side, the hole injection on the suction side throat alters the local pressure fields, and then tends to enhance the shock-wave at the trailing-edge pressure-side; however, it seems to reduce the strength of the shock-wave at the trailing-edge suction side.

Author(s):  
Yousef Kanani ◽  
Sumanta Acharya ◽  
Forrest Ames

Abstract Turbine passage secondary flows are studied for a large rounded leading edge airfoil geometry considered in the experimental investigation of Varty et al. (J. Turbomach. 140(2):021010) using high resolution Large Eddy Simulation (LES). The complex nature of secondary flow formation and evolution are affected by the approach boundary layer characteristics, components of pressure gradients tangent and normal to the passage flow, surface curvature, and inflow turbulence. This paper presents a detailed description of the secondary flows and heat transfer in a linear vane cascade at exit chord Reynolds number of 5 × 105 at low and high inflow turbulence. Initial flow turning at the leading edge of the inlet boundary layer leads to a pair of counter-rotating flow circulation in each half of the cross-plane that drive the evolution of the pressure-side and suction side of the near-wall vortices such as the horseshoe and leading edge corner vortex. The passage vortex for the current large leading-edge vane is formed by the amplification of the initially formed circulation closer to the pressure side (PPC) which strengthens and merges with other vortex systems while moving toward the suction side. The predicted suction surface heat transfer shows good agreement with the measurements and properly captures the augmented heat transfer due to the formation and lateral spreading of the secondary flows towards the vane midspan downstream of the vane passage. Effects of various components of the secondary flows on the endwall and vane heat transfer are discussed in detail.


2012 ◽  
Vol 134 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Giovanna Barigozzi ◽  
Antonio Perdichizzi ◽  
Silvia Ravelli

Tests on a specifically designed linear nozzle guide vane cascade with trailing edge coolant ejection were carried out to investigate the influence of trailing edge bleeding on both aerodynamic and thermal performance. The cascade is composed of six vanes with a profile typical of a high pressure turbine stage. The trailing edge cooling features a pressure side cutback with film cooling slots, stiffened by evenly spaced ribs in an inline configuration. Cooling air is ejected not only through the slots but also through two rows of cooling holes placed on the pressure side, upstream of the cutback. The cascade was tested for different isentropic exit Mach numbers, ranging from M2is = 0.2 to M2is = 0.6, while varying the coolant to mainstream mass flow ratio MFR up to 2.8%. The momentum boundary layer behavior at a location close to the trailing edge, on the pressure side, was assessed by means of laser Doppler measurements. Cases with and without coolant ejection allowed us to identify the contribution of the coolant to the off the wall velocity profile. Thermochromic liquid crystals (TLC) were used to map the adiabatic film cooling effectiveness on the pressure side cooled region. As expected, the cutback effect on cooling effectiveness, compared to the other cooling rows, was dominant.


2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (02) ◽  
pp. 1850020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seongkyu Lee

This paper investigates the effect of airfoil shape on trailing edge noise. The boundary layer profiles are obtained by XFOIL and the trailing edge noise is predicted by a TNO semi-empirical model. In order to investigate the noise source characteristics, the wall pressure spectrum is decomposed into three components. This decomposition helps in finding the dominant source region and the peak noise frequency for each airfoil. The method is validated for a NACA0012 airfoil, and then five additional wind turbine airfoils are examined: NACA0018, DU96-w-180, S809, S822 and S831. It is found that the dominant source region is around 40% of the boundary layer thickness for both the suction and pressure sides for a NACA0012 airfoil. As airfoil thickness and camber increase, the maximum source region moves slightly upward on the suction side. However, the effect of the airfoil shape on the maximum source region on the pressure side is negligible, except for the S831 airfoil, which exhibits an extension of the noise source region near the wall at high frequencies. As airfoil thickness and camber increase, low frequency noise is increased. However, a higher camber reduces low frequency noise on the pressure side. The maximum camber position is also found to be important and its rear position increases noise levels on the suction side.


Author(s):  
Giovanna Barigozzi ◽  
Giuseppe Benzoni ◽  
Antonio Perdichizzi

The paper reports on boundary layer and wake flow analysis in a fully covered, film cooled vane without trailing edge ejection. The investigation, carried out in a low speed wind tunnel for linear cascades, has been mainly focused on the loss generation process due to coolant injection. The investigated region includes the rear part of pressure and suction side boundary layers and the wake region, up to a chord length downstream of the trailing edge. All measurements have been performed at mid-span, air being used as coolant flow. The same measurements have been also performed on a solid blade cascade, i.e. without cooling holes. Boundary layer profiles, integral parameters together with mean and turbulent quantities are presented. It results that the showerhead promotes transition on the suction side, giving rise to a thicker boundary layer all over the surface. On the pressure side, the boundary layer remains laminar up to the trailing edge, as high acceleration prevents transition. The wake region seems not to be strongly altered by the coolant injection. Boundary layer profiles and downstream 5-hole probe traverses have been used to compute loss coefficient distributions all over the blade surface and in the downstream region. Coolant injection strongly increases the profile losses along the suction side, while a much smaller contribution from the pressure side has been found. These increases are mainly due to coolant injection in the vane front part.


Author(s):  
Sarwesh Parbat ◽  
Li Yang ◽  
Minking Chyu ◽  
Sin Chien Siw ◽  
Ching-Pang Lee

Abstract The strive to achieve increasingly higher efficiencies in gas turbine power generation has led to a continued rise in the turbine inlet temperature. As a result, novel cooling approaches for gas turbine blades are necessary to maintain them within the material’s thermal mechanical performance envelope. Various internal and external cooling technologies are used in different parts of the blade airfoil to provide the desired levels of cooling. Among the different regions of the blade profile, the trailing edge (TE) presents additional cooling challenges due to the thin cross section and high thermal loads. In this study, a new wavy geometry for the TE has been proposed and analyzed using steady state numerical simulations. The wavy TE structure resembled a sinusoidal wave running along the span of the blade. The troughs on both pressure side and suction side contained the coolant exit slots. As a result, consecutive coolant exit slots provided an alternating discharge between the suction side and the pressure side of the blade. Steady state conjugate heat transfer simulations were carried out using CFX solver for four coolant to mainstream mass flow ratios of 0.45%, 1%, 1.5% and 3%. The temperature distribution and film cooling effectiveness in the TE region were compared to two conventional geometries, pressure side cutback and centerline ejection which are widely used in vanes and blades for both land-based and aviation gas turbine engines. Unstructured mesh was generated for both fluid and solid domains and interfaces were defined between the two domains. For turbulence closer, SST-kω model was used. The wall y+ was maintained < 1 by using inflation layers at all the solid fluid interfaces. The numerical results depicted that the alternating discharge from the wavy TE was able to form protective film coverage on both the pressure and suction side of the blade. As a result, significant reduction in the TE metal was observed which was up to 14% lower in volume averaged temperature in the TE region when compared to the two baseline conventional configurations.


Author(s):  
Toma´sˇ Hofer ◽  
Tony Arts

Modern high pressure turbines operate at high velocity and high temperature conditions. The gap existing above a turbine rotor blade is responsible for an undesirable tip leakage flow. It is a source of high aerodynamic losses and high heat transfer rates. A better understanding of the tip flow behaviour is needed to provide a more efficient cooling design in this region. The objective of this paper is to investigate the tip leakage flow for a blade with two different squealer tips and film-cooling applied on the pressure side and through tip dust holes in a non-rotating, linear cascade arrangement. The experiments were performed in the VKI Light Piston Compression Tube facility, CT-2. The tip gap flow was investigated by oil flow visualisations and by wall static and total pressure measurements. Two geometries were tested — a full squealer and a partial suction side squealer. The measurements were performed in the blade tip region, including the squealer rim and on the corresponding end-wall for engine representative values of outlet Reynolds and Mach numbers. The main flow structures in the cavity were put in evidence. Positive influence of the coolant on the tip gap flow and on the aerodynamic losses was found for the full squealer tip case: increasing the coolant mass-flow increased the tip gap flow resistance. The flow through the clearance therefore slows down, the tip gap mass-flow and the heat transfer respectively decreases. No such effect of cooling was found in the case of the partial suction side squealer geometry. The absence of a pressure side squealer rim resulted in a totally different tip gap flow topology, indifferent to cooling. The influence of cooling on the overall mass-weighted thermodynamic loss coefficient, which takes into account the different energies of the mainstream and coolant flows was found marginal for both geometries. Finally the overall loss coefficient was found to be higher for the partial suction side squealer tip than for the full squealer tip.


Author(s):  
Zhihua Zhou ◽  
Shaowen Chen ◽  
Songtao Wang

Tip clearance flow between rotating blades and the stationary casing in high-pressure turbines is very complex and is one of the most important factors influencing turbine performance. The rotor with a winglet-cavity tip is often used as an effective method to improve the loss resulting from the tip clearance flow. In this study, an aerodynamic geometric optimisation of a winglet-cavity tip was carried out in a linear unshrouded high-pressure axial turbine cascade. For the purpose of shaping the efficient winglet geometry of the rotor tip, a novel parameterisation method has been introduced in the optimisation procedure based on the computational fluid dynamics simulation and analysis. The reliability of a commercial computational fluid dynamics code with different turbulence models was first validated by contrasting with the experimental results, and the numerical total pressure loss and flow angle using the Baseline k-omega Model (BSL κ-ω model) shows a better agreement with the test data. Geometric parameterisation of blade tips along the pressure side and suction side was adopted to optimise the tip clearance flow, and an optimal winglet-cavity tip was proven to achieve lower tip leakage mass flow rate and total pressure loss than the flat tip and cavity tip. Compared to the numerical results of flat tip and cavity tip, the optimised winglet-cavity design, with the winglet along the pressure side and suction side, had lower tip leakage mass flow rate and total pressure loss. It offered a 35.7% reduction in the change ratio [Formula: see text]. In addition, the optimised winglet along pressure side and suction side, respectively, by using the parameterisation method was studied for investigating the individual effect of the pressure-side winglet and suction-side winglet on the tip clearance flow. It was found that the suction-side extension of the optimal winglet resulted in a greater reduction of aerodynamic loss and leakage mass flow than the pressure-side extension of the optimal winglet. Moreover, with the analysis based on the tip flow pattern, the numerical results show that the pressure-side winglet reduced the contraction coefficient, and the suction-side winglet reduced the aerodynamic loss effectively by decreasing the driving pressure difference near the blade tips, the leakage flow velocity, and the interaction between the leakage flow and the main flow. Overall, a better aerodynamic performance can be obtained by adopting the pressure-side and suction-side winglet-cavity simultaneously.


Author(s):  
Boris I. Mamaev ◽  
Mikhail M. Petukhovskiy ◽  
Alexander V. Pozdnyakov ◽  
Marat R. Valeev

A substantial reduction in high temperature turbine efficiency due to a thickening trailing edge on the blades can be compensated by ejection of cooling air on the airfoil pressure side near the edge, which is made thinner at the expense of a pressure-side contour bend. A blade-row midspan section of the aircraft high-pressure turbine was chosen for investigations. Flow parameters of the section: inlet and outlet angles were 36° and 65°, respectively (axial reference), outlet isentropic Mach number was 0.94. Four linear cascades were examined. They differed mainly in the airfoil trailing edge geometry. Three airfoils had the same thin trailing edges and contour bend angles ε = 10, 15 and 20°; one airfoil with a thick round edge had no bend. Widths of the slot for cooling air ejection were the same for all airfoils tested. Measurements were made for exit Mach numbers from 0.6 to 0.95 and relative cooling mass flows from 0 to 1.5%. The respective Reynolds numbers varied from 7.5·106 to 9·106. The incidence value was 2°. Pressure distributions along profiles, outlet total and static pressures, back pressures for cooling air with gas-outlet angles were measured. The experiments showed streamlining of all cascades were favorable. For the airfoils with ε = 10 and 15° the profile losses were low and normal for uncooled cascades with thin trailing edge. Hence, for such bends losses due to a step on the airfoil pressure side were negligible. As expected, the losses in the cascade with the thick rounding edge were significantly higher. The losses in the cascade with ε = 20° were the greatest. The coolant exit had no distinct influence on streamlining airfoils. The back-pressure for cooling air was approximately equal to the outlet static pressure. For cascades with ε = 10 and 15° the ejection of coolant led to a small increase of losses due to additional mixing losses. Thus, the airfoil contour bend is a powerful tool for the aerodynamic improvement of cooled turbines. It may lead to gains in stage efficiency of 1…1.5%. It should be noted that this tool has already been used successfully for several aircraft and industrial turbines of recent design.


Author(s):  
Ivan G. Rice

The integration of multiple steam nozzles with the first-stage annular-gas nozzle to form a binary-flow system in a reheat-gas turbine is presented whereby steam is first used as an internal vane coolant before being expanded and accelerated for work extraction. Steam nozzles are located in “fat-body” type vanes. Trailing-edge impingement followed by reverse-serpentine-flow cooling takes place. Internal trailing-edge-steam nozzles produce either diffusion or shock-wave boundary-layer disturbance inside the trailing edge to enhance heat transfer. Externally, steam blanketing reduces nozzle-profile loss and improves film cooling effectiveness by reducing the surface viscosity and secondly by controlling suction-side aft-shock-wave development. A new vane shape coupled with a gas-turning-combustor system is suggested to improve vane-film cooling effectiveness further.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-34
Author(s):  
Yousef Kanani ◽  
Sumanta Acharya ◽  
Forrest Ames

Abstract Turbine passage secondary flows are studied for a large rounded leading edge airfoil geometry considered in the experimental investigation of Varty et al. (J. Turbomach. 140(2):021010) using high resolution Large Eddy Simulation. The complex nature of secondary flow formation and evolution are affected by the approach boundary layer characteristics, components of pressure gradients tangent and normal to the passage flow, surface curvature, and inflow turbulence. This paper presents a detailed description of the secondary flows and heat transfer in a linear vane cascade at exit chord Reynolds number of 500,000 at low and high inflow turbulence. Initial flow turning at the leading edge of the inlet boundary layer leads to a pair of counter-rotating flow circulation in each half of the cross-plane that drive the evolution of the pressure-side and suction side of the near-wall vortices such as the horseshoe and leading edge corner vortex. The passage vortex for the current large leading-edge vane is formed by the amplification of the initially formed circulation closer to the pressure side which strengthens and merges with other vortex systems while moving toward the suction side. The predicted suction surface heat transfer shows good agreement with the measurements and properly captures the augmented heat transfer due to the formation and lateral spreading of the secondary flows towards the vane midspan downstream of the vane passage. Effects of various components of the secondary flows on the endwall and vane heat transfer are discussed in detail.


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