Numerical Investigation on the Influence of Tip Shroud Design Characteristics on the Aerodynamic Damping of a Last Stage Blade

The accurate predication of aerodynamic flutter margin continues to be an area of growing importance in the design of rotating turbomachinery, especially when considering the ongoing industry objectives for increased operating efficiency, higher power output, and reduced fuel consumption. Improvements in these areas are commonly achieved through incremental design changes to existing hardware, and often trend with higher pressure ratios and mass flow rates through the machine. In many cases, the extent of these flow improvements become constrained by the stability margins of flutter-limiting components such as front-stage compressor blades and last stage turbine blades. In such cases, designers are left with the difficult task of mitigating the flutter risk, but without limiting the overall performance of the machine. The tip shroud of a typical last stage turbine blade can significantly influence the flutter response of the blade. It is this reason that underlines the importance for understanding the sensitivity of shroud design parameters when attempting to achieve a flutter-free design, especially if the aerodynamic qualities of the airfoil need to be preserved. This paper evaluates the flutter performance of a last stage industrial gas turbine blade with multiple tip shroud configurations and demonstrates the influence of the selected design parameters with respect to the aerodynamic damping characteristics of the blade.

Contribution of Tip Shroud Cavity to Loss Generation in the Main Flow of a Low Pressure Turbine Using Steady and Unsteady Numerical Approach

A lot of studies on turbomachinery main flow optimisation have been performed in order to reach current efficiencies. To go further in the study of aerodynamic losses sources, a better understanding of technological effects is required. Tip shroud cavities in low pressure turbine is an example. Indeed, the by-pass flow causes additional pressure losses. In addition, interactions between main flow and cavity flows, as well as the re-entering flow, cause mixing losses and modifications of flow angle. This paper investigates the contribution of tip shroud cavities in a low pressure turbine stage on the overall performance and flow structures. The ability of a steady simulation to predict this kind of flow by comparison with time-resolved results is poorly documented in the literature, and is an objective of this paper. Computations are compared with experimental data from low speed turbine test rig. Entropy production shows that a large amount of additional losses comes from the cavities themselves whichever the steady or unsteady treatment of the simulation. Additional losses generated in the rotor are more dependent on the presence of the shroud or not than the unsteady feature of the simulations.

Multi-Wave Flutter Vibrations in Mistuned Cascades with Tip-Shroud Friction

Measurements taken during aero engine tests and in the field showed that flutter vibrations of shrouded blades can feature rich wave content (multi-wave flutter vibrations). In a previous work, we demonstrated that this behavior can be explained by the nonlinear interaction of aeroelastically unstable traveling wave modes. The resulting vibrations are quasi-periodic. In the present work, we show that the nonlinear modal interaction is not strictly needed, but actually mistuning alone can explain the multi-wave form of flutter vibrations. The resulting vibrations are periodic and dominated by only a single mode shape of the mistuned system. However, unrealistically high mistuning intensities are needed to obtain significant contributions of multiple wave forms under the considered strong inter-blade coupling. Thus, we conclude that mistuning cannot explain the rich wave content observed in the measurements. Moreover, mistuning tends to hamper the nonlinear modal interactions and, thus, the occurrence of quasi-periodic multi-wave flutter vibrations. This implies that intentional mistuning is not only useful to stabilize flutter, but might also play an important role in developing flutter-tolerant blade designs.

Application of blade tip shroud brush seal to improve the aerodynamic performance of turbine stage

The blade tip shroud brush seal is applied to replace the labyrinth seal for the aerodynamic performance improvement of turbine stage. The leakage flow characteristics of the brush seal are numerically predicted by using the Reynolds-Averaged Navier–Stokes equations and non-linear Darcian porous medium model. The numerical leakage flow rate of the brush seal is in well agreement with the experimental data. The last and first long teeth of the labyrinth seal were designed to bristle pack named as the postposed and preposed brush seals based on the 1.5 turbine stage. The leakage flow rate and aerodynamic performance of the turbine stage with blade tip shroud labyrinth seal and brush seal are numerically investigated. The effect of the sealing clearance between bristle pack and tip shroud on the aerodynamic performance of turbine stage is conducted which ranged from 0 mm to 0.4 mm. The axial deflection of the bristle pack is analyzed with consideration of the aerodynamic forces and contact frictional force. The obtained results show that the leakage flow rate of the tip shroud brush seals with bristle tip 0.4 mm clearance which decreases by up to 18% in comparison with the labyrinth seal, and the aerodynamic efficiency increases by 0.6%. Compared to the tip labyrinth seal, tip shroud brush seals can decrease the relative deflection angle of exit flow. This flow behavior results in reducing the mixing loss between the tip leakage flow and mainstream. The similar axial deflection of the bristle pack for two kinds of brush seals is observed at the same sealing clearance. The deflection of the bristle pack under the function of the aerodynamic forces is protected by the backing plate. This work provides the theoretical basis and technical support for the brush seal application in the turbine industries.

Tip-Shroud Labyrinth Seal Effect on the Flutter Stability of Turbine Rotor Blades

The effect of the tip-shroud seal on the flutter onset of a shrouded turbine rotor blade, representative of a modern gas turbine, is numerically tested, and the contributions to the work per cycle of the aerofoil and the tip shroud are clearly identified. The numerical simulations are conducted using a linearized frequency-domain solver. The flutter stability of the shrouded rotor blade is evaluated for an edgewise mode and compared with the standard industrial approach of not including the tip-shroud cavity. It turns out that including the tip shroud significantly changes the stability prediction of the rotor blade. This is due to two facts. First, the amplitude of the unsteady pressure created in the inter-fin cavity due to the motion of the airfoil is much greater than that of the airfoil. The impact of this contribution increases with the frequency. Second, the effect of the outer shroud of the rotor blade, which usually is not included either in the simulations, has an opposite trend with the nodal diameter than the airfoil reducing the maximum and minimum damping. It is concluded that the combined effect of the seal and its platform tends to stabilize the edgewise mode of the rotor blade for all the examined nodal diameters and reduced frequencies. Finally, the numerical results are shown to be consistent with those obtained using an analytical simplified model to account for the effect of the labyrinth seals.

Tip-Shroud Labyrinth Seal Effect on the Flutter Stability of Turbine Rotor Blades

The effect of the tip-shroud seal on the flutter onset of a shrouded turbine rotor blade, representative of a modern gas turbine, is numerically tested and the contribution to the work-per-cycle of the aerofoil and the tip-shroud are clearly identified. The numerical simulations are conducted using a linearised frequency domain solver. The flutter stability of the shrouded rotor blade is evaluated for an edgewise mode and compared with the standard industrial approach of not including the tip-shroud cavity. It turns out that including the tip shroud significantly changes the stability prediction of the rotor blade. This is due to the fact that the amplitude of the unsteady pressure created in the inter-fin cavity, due to the motion of the airfoil, is much greater than that of the airfoil. It is concluded that the combined effect of the seal and its platform tends to stabilise the rotor blade for all the examined nodal diameters and reduced frequencies. Finally, the numerical results are shown to be consistent with those obtained using an analytical simplified model to account for the effect of the labyrinth seals.

Influence of Tip Shroud Modeling on the Flutter Stability of a Low Pressure Turbine Rotor

Since the modern design trend of low pressure turbine blades for aeronautical propulsion leads to lighter and more loaded blades, thus prone to flutter induced vibrations; flutter assessment is now a standard verification within the design loop of these components. Flutter stability assessment requires FEM and CFD tools able to predict the pressure response of fluid flow due to blade oscillation in order to compute the aerodynamic damping. Such tools are mature and validated, yet some geometrical aspects of the blade-row as contact interfaces at the blade tip shroud have to be carefully simulated to obtain accurate flutter results. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the capability of the Open Source FEM tool (CalculiX) to deal with complex interlocked rotor geometries when performing modal analysis and to show the influence of different contact interface modeling on flutter stability. The solid mesh of a single-pitch row sector has been generated by using the Open Source suite Salome and the modal analysis has been carried out with CalculiX with cyclic symmetry conditions. The following uncoupled flutter simulations have been performed with the CFD TRAF code, an in-house solver developed at the University of Florence, which implements a non-linear method for flutter evaluation. An in-depth comparison among the FEM models with different boundary conditions in terms of mode shape frequency and aerodynamic damping curves are reported. These results show the effect of different contact interface models, especially on the first bending mode family, and confirm the overall row stability detected during a dedicated experimental flutter campaign.