Heat(Mass) Transfer Characteristics in the Tip-Leakage Flow Region of a High-Turning Turbine Rotor Blade

2004 ◽  
Vol 28 (5) ◽  
pp. 535-544
2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Md Hamidur Rahman ◽  
Sung In Kim ◽  
Ibrahim Hassan

Steady simulations have been performed to investigate tip leakage flow and heat transfer characteristics on the casing and rotor blade tip in a single stage turbine engine. A turbine stage of stator and rotor was modeled with a pressure ratio of 3.2. The predicted isentropic Mach number and adiabatic wall temperature on the casing showed good agreement with available experimental data. The effects of tip clearance height and rotor rotational speed on the blade tip and casing heat transfer characteristics are mainly considered. It is observed that the tip leakage flow structure is highly dependent on the height of the tip gap as well as speeds of the rotor blade. In all cases, flow separates just around the corner of the pressure side of the blade tip. The region of recirculating flow increases with the increase of the clearance height. Then the flow reattaches on the tip surface near the suction side beyond the flow separation. This flow reattachment enhances surface heat transfer. The leakage flow interaction with the reverse cross flow, induced by relative casing motion, is found to have significant effect on the blade tip and casing heat transfer distribution. Critical region of high heat transfer on the casing exists near the blade tip leading edge and along the pressure side edge at all clearance height. Whereas, at high speed rotation, it tends to move towards the trailing edge due to the change of inflow angle.


Author(s):  
Rachel Trehan ◽  
Bhaskar Roy

The present paper focuses on a low-speed computational investigation into the application of backward sweep for application on a typical low-pressure turbine rotor blade. A quasi-two-dimensional linear cascade using T106 profile, was investigated using flow solver Star-CCM+®. Three backward-swept tip modifications (axial sweep, tangential sweep, and a combination of both) have been applied to the baseline profile from 90%–100% span, the rest of the 90% of the blade remained straight and orthogonal to the cascade mainstream flow. The blade stacking axis near the tip was shifted away from the mainstream flow for all three sweep configurations at 15°, 30°, and 45° from the blade axis plane. The impact on pressure losses, tip blade loading, and reduction of tip leakage flow and associated vortices has been analyzed. As the leakage vortex increases in size, causing enhanced blockage to the passage flow, rotor work extraction capability decreases. The application of backward sweep to the blade tip increases the tip cross flow rate, but reduces the turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) across the tip gap. The reduction of TKE of the leakage flow, results in a smaller and less intense tip leakage vortex even though the cross flow rate increases. Minimizing the leakage vortex size and intensity reduces total pressure losses and thereby improves rotor efficiency.


Author(s):  
Wei Li ◽  
Wei-Yang Qiao ◽  
Kai-Fu Xu ◽  
Hua-Ling Luo

The tip leakage flow has significant effects on turbine in loss production, aerodynamic efficiency, etc. Then it’s important to minimize these effects for a better performance by adopting corresponding flow control. The active turbine tip clearance flow control with injection from the tip platform is given in Part-1 of this paper. This paper is Part-2 of the two-part papers focusing on the effect of five different passive turbine tip clearance flow control methods on the tip clearance flow physics, which consists of a partial suction side squealer tip (Partial SS Squealer), a double squealer tip (Double Side Squealer), a pressure side tip shelf with inclined squealer tip on a double squealer tip (Improved PS Squealer), a tip platform extension edge in pressure side (PS Extension) and in suction side (SS Extension) respectively. Combined with the turbine rotor and the numerical method mentioned in Part 1, the effects of passive turbine tip clearance flow controls on the tip clearance flow were sequentially simulated. The detailed tip clearance flow fields with different squealer rims were described with the streamline and the velocity vector in various planes parallel to the tip platform or normal to the tip leakage vortex core. Accordingly, the mechanisms of five passive controls were put in evidence; the effects of the passive controls on the turbine efficiency and the tip clearance flow field were highlighted. The results show that the secondary flow loss near the outer casing including the tip leakage flow and the casing boundary layer can be reduced in all the five passive control methods. Comparing the active control with the passive control, the effect brought by the active injection control on the tip leakage flow is evident. The turbine rotor efficiency could be increased via the rational passive turbine tip clearance flow control. The Improved PS Squealer had the best effect on turbine rotor efficiency, and it increased by 0.215%.


Author(s):  
S. K. Krishnababu ◽  
H. P. Hodson ◽  
G. D. Booth ◽  
G. D. Lock ◽  
W. N. Dawes

A numerical investigation of the flow and heat transfer characteristics of tip leakage in a typical film cooled industrial gas turbine rotor is presented in this paper. The computations were performed on a rotating domain of a single blade with a clearance gap of 1.28% chord in an engine environment. This standard blade featured two coolant and two dust holes, in a cavity-type tip with a central rib. The computations were performed using CFX 5.6, which was validated for similar flow situations by Krishnababu et al., [18]. These predictions were further verified by comparing the flow and heat transfer characteristics computed in the absence of coolant ejection with computations previously performed in the company (SIEMENS) using standard in-house codes. Turbulence was modelled using the SST k-ω turbulence model. The comparison of calculations performed with and without coolant ejection has shown that the coolant flow partially blocks the tip gap, resulting in a reduction of the amount of mainstream leakage flow. The calculations identified that the main detrimental heat transfer issues were caused by impingement of the hot leakage flow onto the tip. Hence three different modifications (referred as Cases 1 to 3) were made to the standard blade tip in an attempt to reduce the tip gap exit mass flow and the associated impingement heat transfer. The improvements and limitations of the modified geometries, in terms of tip gap exit mass flow, total area of the tip affected by the hot flow and the total heat flux to the tip, are discussed. The main feature of the Case 1 geometry is the removal of the rib and this modification was found to effectively reduce both the total area affected by the hot leakage flow and total heat flux to the tip while maintaining the same leakage mass flow as the standard blade. Case 2 featured a rearrangement of the dust holes in the tip which, in terms of aero-thermal-dynamics, proved to be marginally inferior to Case 1. Case 3, which essentially created a suction-side squealer geometry, was found to be inferior even to the standard cavity tip blade. It was also found that the hot spots which occur in the leading edge region of the standard tip and all modifications contributed significantly to the area affected by the hot tip leakage flow and the total heat flux.


Author(s):  
J. Luo ◽  
B. Lakshminarayana

The 3-D viscous flowfield in the rotor passage of a single-stage turbine, including the tip-leakage flow, is computed using a Navier-Stokes procedure. A grid-generation code has been developed to obtain embedded H grids inside the rotor tip gap. The blade tip geometry is accurately modeled without any “pinching”. Chien’s low-Reynolds-number k-ε model is employed for turbulence closure. Both the mean-flow and turbulence transport equations are integrated in time using a four-stage Runge-Kutta scheme. The computational results for the entire turbine rotor flow, particularly the tip-leakage flow and the secondary flows, are interpreted and compared with available data. The predictions for major features of the flowfield are found to be in good agreement with the data. Complicated interactions between the tip-clearance flows and the secondary flows are examined in detail. The effects of endwall rotation on the development and interaction of secondary and tip-leakage vortices are also analyzed.


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