Theoretical Estimation of Minimum and Maximum Allowable Rotational Speed of Supercritical CO2 Inward Flow Radial Turbine

Supercritical CO2 inward flow radial turbines necessitate high operating speeds due to the high density of sCO2, especially in sub-MW scale power generation where rotational speeds can be in the range of 50k to 150k rpm. Although designing the turbine at these high rotational speeds is reasonable from the aerodynamic efficiency point of view but generally not practical to operate. A theoretical framework based on 1-D meanline analysis is built to evaluate the minimum and maximum rotational speed limits corresponding to a set of boundary conditions and operating constraints. The results show that minimum allowable speed depends on the inlet velocity triangle (IVT) and is constrained by inlet Mach number, inlet blade height, and inlet flow angle. On the other hand, maximum allowable speed depends on the outlet velocity triangle (OVT) and is constrained by outlet relative Mach number, outlet hub radius, and blade speed. The theoretical models are demonstrated from kilowatt to megawatt power levels, and the results are compared with commercial software and Balje’s Ns-Ds diagram. Although this study is highlighted in the context of supercritical CO2 as the working fluid, in principle, the same models are equally valid for any working fluid.

A numerical study for correlating performance versus number of blades and investigating flow characteristics and loss generation of an automotive radial flow turbine

Hybridization of engines is the future technology to overcome the increasing emissions of CO2 and pollutants from internal combustion engines. So far, the current technology, called downsizing, involves reducing engine size while maintaining continuous engine boosting with a turbocharger. It is well known that the radial turbine, an essential component of turbochargers, is a seat of various loss mechanisms such as incidence losses which significantly affect performance. As a contribution for further improving performance and reducing loss generation in radial turbines, this study investigates the effect of the blade number on performance and loss generation within a radial turbine of small scale turbocharger. To this end, six radial turbines were designed with several blade numbers ranging from three up to thirteen. The flow solution was computed by solving the Navier-Stokes equations using a CFD solver. The numerical results were validated against experiments. The results revealed that the impeller of 11 blades provides better performance than the other investigated designs. The results showed a substantial effect of the number of blades on the distribution of flow characteristics and loss generation. The efficiency, mass flow rate, output torque, blade loading, and leakage flow through the clearance gap of the turbine were correlated to the number of blades.

Modelling the Condensation Phenomena within the Radial Turbine of a Fuel Cell Turbocharger

Radial turbines used in automotive fuel cell turbochargers operate with humid air. The gas expansion in the turbine causes droplets to form, which then grow through condensation. The associated release of latent heat and decrease in the gaseous mass flow strongly influence the thermodynamics of the turbine. This study aims to investigate these phenomena. For this purpose, the classical nucleation theory and Young’s growth law are integrated into a Euler–Lagrange approach. The main advantages of this approach are the calculation of individual droplet trajectories and a full resolution of the droplet spectrum. The results indicate an onset of nucleation at the blade tip and in the tip gap, followed by nucleation over the entire blade span, depending on the humidity at the turbine inlet. With a saturated turbine inflow, condensation causes the outlet temperature to rise to almost the same level as at the inlet. In addition, condensation losses reduce the efficiency and the latent heat released by condensation leads to significant thermal throttling.

Analysis of Radial Inflow Turbine Losses Operating with Supercritical Carbon Dioxide

The losses of supercritical CO2 radial turbines with design power scales of about 1 MW were investigated by using computational fluid dynamic simulations. The simulation results were compared with loss predictions from enthalpy loss correlations. The aim of the study was to investigate how the expansion losses are divided between the stator and rotor as well as to compare the loss predictions obtained with the different methods for turbine designs with varying specific speeds. It was observed that a reasonably good agreement between the 1D loss correlations and computational fluid dynamics results can be obtained by using a suitable set of loss correlations. The use of different passage loss models led to high deviations in the predicted rotor losses, especially with turbine designs having the highest or lowest specific speeds. The best agreement in respect to CFD results with the average deviation of less than 10% was found when using the CETI passage loss model. In addition, the other investigated passage loss models provided relatively good agreement for some of the analyzed turbine designs, but the deviations were higher when considering the full specific speed range that was investigated. The stator loss analysis revealed that despite some differences in the predicted losses between the methods, a similar trend in the development of the losses was observed as the turbine specific speed was changed.

Development of Choked Flow in Variable Nozzle Radial Turbines

In commonly applied one-dimensional choking models for radial turbines, choked flow is assumed to appear in the geometrical throat of each stator and rotor. Coupled and complex three-dimensional effects are not considered. In order to analyze the internal aerodynamic in a radial turbine at off design conditions and before carrying out experimental tests, which in the case of automotive turbocharger are limited by their compact size, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations stand out as a useful tool. This paper presents the study of a variable geometry turbine (VGT) of a commercial turbocharger at off design conditions reaching choked flow, analyzing the presence of this limiting conditions in the stator and rotor under different operation points and VGT positions. Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) and unsteady RANS simulation have been performed to obtain the flow structures in stator and rotor. The results reveal that the choked effective area mostly depends on the stator vane position and pressure ratio. For the closed VGT position a standing shock wave appears on the stator suction side and expands through the vaneless space. For the opened VGT position the flow is choked at the rotor outlet. However, the evolution of the choked area highly depends on the rotational speed and the secondary flow. A strong interaction with the tip leakage vortex has been identified.

Twin-entry turbine losses: An analysis using CFD data

The current paper presents a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) flow behaviour and losses analysis of twin-entry radial turbines in terms of its Mass Flow Ratio ( MFR, the ratio between the flow passing through one of its intake ports and its total mass flow), focusing on the mixing phenomena in the unequal admission conditions cases. The CFD simulations are first validated with experimental data. Then, the losses mechanisms are analysed and quantified in the different parts of the twin-entry turbine in terms of the MFR value. A sudden expansion is found at the junction of both branches in the interspace between volutes and rotor for unequal and partial admission cases. Tracking the flow coming from each of the turbine intake ports, it has been observed that both flow branches do not fully mix with each other within the rotor. Another source of losses has been identified in the contact between both flow branches due to their momentum exchange that depends on the difference between both flow branches velocities. These losses have not been considered before, and they should be included in mean line loss-based models for twin-entry turbine since they are very significant for unequal admission conditions.

An engineering approach for the fast simulation of radial inflow turbines with vaneless spiral casing by single-channel CFD models

The basic RANS-CFD analysis of the simplest radial-inflow turbine configuration is the subject of this paper. An original technique is here proposed to model the effect of the vaneless spiral casing using single-channel CFD calculations and providing an effective alternative to the more complex simulation of the 360-degree domain otherwise required to simulate this turbine configuration. The aim of the paper is to verify the effectiveness of the proposed modelling technique as a reliable engineering approach conceived to support the preliminary design phase of radial-inflow turbines with time-effective CFD calculations. To this end, the open-source CFD code MULTALL has been used to predict the aerodynamic performance of optimal designs of radial-inflow turbines with different specific speed and diameter and working with air as ideal gas. The MULTALL predictions are compared with the corresponding steady-state results obtained by calculations suited to the preliminary assessment of radial turbines designs performed on fully 360-degree turbine domains using the commercial code Star CCM+®. The investigation is conducted on two turbines that are designed in accordance with a widely validated method. The results show that the proposed CFD approach predicts well the trends and values of the aerodynamic performance of both the turbine designs: a 5% overestimation of the performance predicted by the fully 360-degree CFD models was never exceeded. The suggested turbine modelling approach implemented in MULTALL requires a three times lower computation time than the corresponding traditional 360-degree model.

Uncertainty Quantification Methodologies Applied to the Rotor Tip Clearance Effect in a Twin Scroll Radial Turbine

In the last three decades computer simulation tools have achieved wide spread use in the design and analysis of engineering devices. This has shortened the overall product design cycle (physical experiments may be impossible during early design stages) and it has also provided better understanding of the operating behavior of the systems under investigation. As a consequence numerical simulation have led to a reduction of physical prototyping and to lower costs for manufacturing production chains. Despite this success, it remains difficult to provide objective confidence levels in quantitative information derived from numerical predictions. The complexity arises from the amount of uncertainties related to the inputs of any computation attempting to represent a physical system. This paper focuses on geometrical sources of uncertainty in the field of CFD applied to twin scroll radial turbines. In particular it has been investigated the effect of uncertainties on tip clearance values at rotor blade leading edge and trailing edge on selected turbine performance parameters. The analysis shows the use of the Surrogate-based uncertainty quantification technique that has been setup by the authors in the Dakota® environment. The polynomial chaos expansion method has been applied to the same case. The comparison of the results coming from the different approaches and the discussion of the pros and cons related to each technique lead to interesting conclusions, which are proposed as guidelines for future UQ applications on the theme of CFD applied to radial turbines.