The Internal Structure of the Tip Leakage Vortex Within the Rotor of an Axial Waterjet Pump

The complex flow field in the tip region of a turbomachine rotor, including the tip leakage flow and tip leakage vortex (TLV), has been studied for decades. Yet many associated phenomena are still not understood. This paper provides detailed data on the instantaneous and phase averaged inner structure of the tip flow, and evolution of the TLV. Observations are based on series of high resolution planar particle image velocimetry measurements performed in a transparent waterjet pump fitted into an optical refractive index matched test facility. Velocity distributions and turbulence statistics are obtained in several meridional planes inside the rotor. We observe that the instantaneous TLV structure is composed of several unsteady vortex filaments that propagate into the blade passage. These filaments are first embedded into a vortex sheet generated at the suction side of the blade tip, and then they wrap around each other and roll up into the TLV. These vortices do not have sufficient time to merge into a single compact structure within the blade passage. We also find that the leakage vortex induces flow separation at the casing endwall and entrains the casing boundary layer with its counter-rotating vorticity. As it propagates in the rotor passage, the TLV migrates towards the pressure side of the neighboring blade. Unsteadiness associated with observed vortical structures is also investigated. We notice that, at early stages of the TLV evolution, turbulence is elevated in the vortex sheet, in the flow entrained from the endwall, and near the vortex core. Interestingly, the turbulence observed around the core is not consistent with the local distribution of turbulent kinetic energy production rate. This mismatch indicates that, given a TLV section, production likely occurs at preceding stages of the vortex evolution. Then, the turbulence is convected to the core of the TLV, and we suggest that this transport has substantial component along the vortex. Because we observe that the meandering of vortex filaments dominate the flow in the passage, we decompose the unsteadiness surrounding the TLV core to contributions from interlaced vortices and broadband turbulence. Results of this decomposition show that the two contributions are of the same order of magnitude. The TLV is investigated also beyond the trailing edge of the rotor blade. During these late stages of its evolution, the TLV approaches the pressure side of the neighboring blade and vortex breakdown occurs, causing rapid broadening of the phase average core, with little change in overall circulation. Associated turbulence occupies almost half the width of the blade passage and turbulence production there is also broadly distributed. Proximity of the TLV to the pressure side of the neighboring blade also affects entrainment of flow into the incoming tip region.

Stability Enhancement by Casing Grooves: The Importance of Stall Inception Mechanism and Solidity

This paper concerns the optimisation of casing grooves and the important influence of stall inception mechanism on groove performance. Installing casing grooves is a well known technique for improving the stable operating range of a compressor, but the wide-spread use of grooves is restricted by the loss of efficiency and flow capacity. In this paper, laboratory tests are used to examine the conditions under which casing treatment can be used to greatest effect. The use of a single casing groove was investigated in a recently published companion paper. The current work extends this to multiple-groove treatments and considers their performance in relation to stall inception mechanisms. Here it is shown that the stall margin gain from multiple grooves is less than the sum of the gains if the grooves were used individually. By contrast, the loss of efficiency is additive as the number of grooves increases. It is then shown that casing grooves give the greatest stall margin improvement when used in a compressor which exhibits spike-type stall inception, while modal activity before stall can dramatically reduce the effectiveness of the grooves. This finding highlights the importance of being able to predict the stall inception mechanism which might occur in a given compressor before and after grooves are added. Some published prediction techniques are therefore examined, but found wanting. Lastly, it is shown that casing grooves can, in some cases, be used to remove rotor blades and produce a more efficient, stable and light-weight rotor.

The Influence of Different Rim Seal Geometries on Hot-Gas Ingestion and Total Pressure Loss in a Low-Pressure Turbine

In order to prevent hot-gas ingestion into the rotating turbo machine’s inside, rim seals are used in the cavities located between stator- and rotor-disc. The sealing flow ejected through the rim seal interacts with the boundary layer of the main gas flow, thus playing a significant role in the formation of secondary flows which are a major contributor to aerodynamic losses in turbine passages. Investigations performed in the EU project MAGPI concentrate on the interaction between the sealing flow and the main gas flow and in particular on the influence of different rim seal geometries regarding the loss-mechanism in a low-pressure turbine passage. Within the CFD work reported in this paper static simulations of one typical low-pressure turbine passage were conducted containing two different rim seal geometries, respectively. The sealing flow through the rim seal had an azimuthal velocity component and its rate has been varied between 0–1% of the main gas flow. The modular design of the computational domain provided the easy exchange of the rim seal geometry without remeshing the main gas flow. This allowed assessing the appearing effects only to the change of rim seal geometry. The results of this work agree with well-known secondary flow phenomena inside a turbine passage and reveal the impact of the different rim seal geometries on hot-gas ingestion and aerodynamic losses quantified by a total pressure loss coefficient along the turbine blade. While the simple axial gap geometry suffers considerable hot-gas ingestion upstream the blade leading edge, the compound geometry implying an axial overlapping presents a more promising prevention against hot-gas ingestion. Furthermore, the effect of rim seals on the turbine passage flow field has been identified applying adequate flow visualisation techniques. As a result of the favourable conduction of sealing flow through the compound geometry, the boundary layer is less lifted by the ejected sealing flow, thus resulting in a comparatively reduced total pressure loss coefficient over the turbine blade.

Steam Turbine Design Considerations for Ultrasupercritical Cycles

The current coal-fired power generation market requires higher cycle efficiencies not only for economic reasons, but also as a means of reducing plant carbon footprint. To achieve these goals, the plant must operate at higher pressures and temperatures in the supercritical (SC) and ultrasupercritical (USC) domains. This paper describes Bechtel’s experience and challenges in regard to the conceptual design and integration of large steam turbines operating under these severe conditions. Several examples of projects are described wherein Bechtel applied this neutral but proactive technical approach in the development or design phase to achieve the best and most cost-effective solution for its customers. The topics presented also relate to steam cycle optimization in terms of plant output, steam conditions, number of reheat circuits, and type and number of heaters. The impact on balance of plant systems, including water treatment, availability, and redundancy criteria, is also addressed.

Measurements of Endwall Flows in Transonic Linear Turbine Cascades: Part II—High Flow Turning

An experimental investigation of two low-turning (90°) transonic linear turbine cascades was presented in Part I of the paper. Part II examines two high-turning (112°) turbine cascades. The experimental results include total pressure losses, streamwise vorticity and secondary kinetic energy distributions. The measurements were made using a seven-hole pressure probe downstream of the cascades. In addition to the measurements, surface flow visualization was conducted to assist in the interpretation of the flow physics. The turbine cascades in Part II, referred to as SL1F and SL2F, have the same inlet and outlet design flow angles, but different aerodynamic loading levels: SL2F is more highly loaded than SL1F. The surface flow visualization results show evidence of small flow separation on the suction side of both airfoils. At the design conditions (outlet Mach number ≈ 0.8), SL2F exhibits stronger vortical structures and larger secondary velocities than SL1F. The two cascades, however, produce similar row losses based on the measurements at 40% axial chord lengths downstream of the trailing edge. Additional data were collected at off-design outlet Mach numbers of 0.65 and 0.91. As the Mach number is raised, the cascades become more aft-loaded. The absolute blade loadings increase, but the Zweifel coefficients decrease due to higher outlet dynamic pressures. Both profile and secondary losses decrease at higher Mach numbers; the main vortical structures and the corresponding peak losses migrate towards the endwall, and there are reductions in secondary kinetic energy and exit flow angle variations. The streamwise vorticity distributions show smaller peak vorticities associated with the passage and the counter vortices at higher exit Mach numbers. The corner vortex, on the other hand, becomes more intensified, resulting in reduction of flow overturning near the endwall. The results for SL1F and SL2F are compared and contrasted with the results for the lower turning cascades presented in Part I. The possible effects of suction-surface flow separation on profile and secondary losses are discussed in this context. The current research project is part of a larger study concerning the effects of endwall contouring on secondary losses, which will be presented in the near future.

Numerical Simulation of Clocking Effect on Wake Transportation and Interaction in a 1.5-Stage Axial Turbine

To give insight into the clocking effect and its influence on the wake transportation and its interaction, the unsteady three-dimensional flow through a 1.5-stage axial low pressure turbine is simulated numerically using a density-correction based, Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes equations commercial CFD code. The 2nd stator clocking is applied over ten equal tangential positions. The results show that the harmonic blade number ratio is an important factor affecting the clocking effect. The clocking effect has a very small influence on the turbine efficiency in this investigation. The efficiency difference between the maximum and minimum configuration is nearly 0.1%. The maximum efficiency can be achieved when the 1st stator wake enters the 2nd stator passage near blade suction surface and its adjacent wake passes through the 2nd stator passage close to blade pressure surface. The minimum efficiency appears if the 1st stator wake impinges upon the leading edge of the 2nd stator and its adjacent wake of the 1st stator passed through the mid-channel in the 2nd stator.

Compressor Design for Multi-Point Operating Conditions of Turbocharged Gasoline Engines

Turbocharger compressor design is a major challenge for performance improvement of turbocharged internal combustion engines. This paper presents a multi-point design methodology for turbocharger centrifugal compressors. In this approach, several design operating condition points of turbocharger compressor are considered according to total engine system requirements, instead of one single operating point for traditional design method. Different compressor geometric parameters are selected and investigated at multi-point operating conditions for the flow-solutions of different design objectives. The method has been applied with success to a small centrifugal compressor design of a turbocharged gasoline engine. The results show that the consideration of several operating points is essential to improve the aerodynamic behavior for the whole working range. The isentropic efficiency has been increased by more than 5% at part-load conditions while maintaining the pressure ratio and flow range at full-load conditions of the gasoline engine.

On Reliable Performance Prediction of Axial Turbomachines

There is a need to reliably predict the performance (efficiency and total pressure rise) of axial turbomachines from model tests for different load ranges. The commonly used scale-up formulas are not able to reliably predict the performance, especially beyond the design point. Furthermore these formulas do not regard changes in relative roughness as they usually occur in practice. An improved scale-up formula is proposed which achieves not only the reliable scale-up of efficiency, but also the scale-up of the pressure coefficient. It is motivated from measurements on two geometric similar axial model fans with a diameter of 1000 mm respectively 250 mm at different rotational speeds, hence Reynolds numbers. By bonding grains of sand to the impeller the influence of relative roughness was investigated. For applying the formula to different load ranges a factor V is introduced that depends on the quotient of effective flow coefficient to optimal flow coefficient.

Compressor Performance and Operability in Swirl Distortion

Inlet swirl distortion has become a major area of concern in the gas turbine engine community. Gas turbine engines are increasingly installed with more complicated and tortuous inlet systems, like those found on embedded installations on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). These inlet systems can produce complex swirl patterns in addition to total pressure distortion. The effect of swirl distortion on engine or compressor performance and operability must be evaluated. The gas turbine community is developing methodologies to measure and characterize swirl distortion. There is a strong need to develop a database containing the impact of a range of swirl distortion patterns on a compressor performance and operability. A recent paper presented by the authors described a versatile swirl distortion generator system that produced a wide range of swirl distortion patterns of a prescribed strength, including bulk swirl, twin swirl and offset swirl. The design of these swirl generators greatly improved the understanding of the formation of swirl. The next step of this process is to understand the effect of swirl on compressor performance. A previously published paper by the authors used parallel compressor analysis to map out different speed lines that resulted from different types of swirl distortion. For the study described in this paper, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model is used to couple upstream swirl generator geometry to a single stage of an axial compressor in order to generate a family of compressor speed lines. The complex geometry of the analyzed swirl generators requires that the full 360° compressor be included in the CFD model. A full compressor can be modeled several ways in a CFD analysis, including sliding mesh and frozen rotor techniques. For a single operating condition, a study was conducted using both of these techniques to determine the best method given the large size of the CFD model and the number of data points that needed to be run to generate speed lines. This study compared the CFD results for the undistorted compressor at 100% speed to comparable test data. Results of this study indicated that the frozen rotor approach provided just as accurate results as the sliding mesh but with a greatly reduced cycle time. Once the CFD approach was calibrated, the same techniques were used to determine compressor performance and operability when a full range of swirl distortion patterns were generated by upstream swirl generators. The compressor speed line shift due to co-rotating and counter-rotating bulk swirl resulted in a predictable performance and operability shift. Of particular importance is the compressor performance and operability resulting from an exposure to a set of paired swirl distortions. The CFD generated speed lines follow similar trends to those produced by parallel compressor analysis.

Highly Loaded Low-Pressure Turbine: Design, Numerical, and Experimental Analysis

The performance and detailed flow physics of a highly loaded, transonic, low-pressure turbine stage has been investigated numerically and experimentally. The mean rotor Zweifel coefficient was 1.35, with dh/U2 = 2.8, and a total pressure ratio of 1.75. The aerodynamic design was based on recent developments in boundary layer transition modeling. Steady and unsteady numerical solutions were used to design the blade geometry as well as to predict the design and off-design performance. Measurements were acquired in a recently developed, high-speed, rotating turbine facility. The nozzle-vane only and full stage characteristics were measured with varied mass flow, Reynolds number, and free-stream turbulence. The efficiency calculated from torque at the design speed and pressure ratio of the turbine was found to be 90.6%. This compared favorably to the mean line target value of 90.5%. This paper will describe the measurements and numerical solutions in detail for both design and off-design conditions.