Experimental Investigation of Steady and Unsteady Flow Field Downstream of an Automotive Torque Converter Turbine and Inside the Stator: Part II — Unsteady Pressure on the Stator Blade Surface

The stator flow field of an automotive torque converter is highly unsteady due to potential and viscous interactions with upstream and downstream rotors. The objective of this investigation is to understand the influence of potential and viscous interactions of the upstream rotor on the stator surface pressure field with a view towards improvement of the stator design. Five miniature fast-response pressure transducers were embedded on the stator blade. The measurements were conducted at three locations near the leading edge and two locations near the trailing edge at the mid-span location. Upstream flow field was measured using a fast response five-hole probe and is described in the first part of this paper. The experimental data were processed in the frequency domain by spectrum analysis and in temporal-spatial domain by the ensemble averaging technique. The flow properties were resolved into mean, periodic, aperiodic and unresolved components. The unsteady amplitudes agreed well with the pressure envelope predicted by panel methods. Aperiodic component was found to be significant due to the rotor-rotor and rotor-stator interactions observed in multistage, multi-spool environment.

Stator Exit Flow Fields in the Multistage Environment of an Axial Compressor

Detailed measurements have been taken at the exit of the four stages of an axial compressor of industrial design for two operating points. Pneumatic probes and fast response pressure transducers have been used. Special attention is paid to the endwall flow near hub and casing and the stage-by-stage development of this region of high loss. The steady state investigations show the leakage flow to be the dominant feature of the endwall region near the hub. This is also apparent near the casing for the unshrouded and adjustable stator blades. At the hub this flow phenomenon intensifies axially from stage-to-stage and with increased aerodynamic loading. Variations in geometry of the radial clearance at the casing have been investigated to understand the structure and effects of the leakage flow. Unsteady state flow measurements confirm the steady state results. Further, the endwall flow and especially the leakage vortex are detected as regions of high periodic fluctuations.

Numerical and Experimental Analysis of Secondary Flow in Modern State-of-the-Art Low Pressure Guide Vane Rows

To enhance the performance of the inlet guide vane and the annular duct of a jet engine, a detailed investigation of annular cascades with two different types of turbine guide vane rows is made. The first one is a leaned guide vane with an aspect ratio of two and a half and a transition duct ahead of the vane. To avoid the losses associated to the decelerating transition duct an alternative vane is designed and investigated with the same inlet and exit conditions. In this case the chord of the vane is increased to the effect that the vane begins immediately at the enterance of the diverging annulus and so a continuously accelerated flow is achieved. To maintain a good performance for this configuration a bowed-type vane with an aspect ratio of one is designed. The aim of the investigation is to obtain detailed informations on the secondary flow behaviour with particular regard to the development of the total pressure losses and the streamwise vorticity of the vortices inside and behind the blade rows. In the first step a three-dimensional, structured, explicit finite-volume flow-solver with a k–ε turbulence model is validated against the measurements, which were made in cross-sections behind the blades. Having proved that the numerical results are very close to the experimental ones, the secondary flow behaviour inside and behind the blade rows is analysed in the second step. By calculating the streamwise vorticity from the numerical results the formation of horse-shoe vortex, passage-vortex and the trailing edge vortex shed is investigated. The differences of the vortical motion and the formation of the total pressure losses between the two configurations of turbine guide vane rows are discussed.

Performance Assessment of an Annular S-Shaped Duct

An experimental investigation has been carried out to determine the aerodynamic performance of an annular S-shaped duct representative of that used to connect the compressor spools of aircraft gas turbine engines. For inlet conditions in which boundary layers are developed along an upstream entry length the static pressure, shear stress and velocity distributions are presented. The data shows that as a result of flow curvature significant streamwise pressure gradients exist within the duct, with this curvature also affecting the generation and suppression of turbulence. The stagnation pressure loss within the duct is also assessed and is consistent with the measured distributions of shear stress. More engine representative conditions are provided by locating a single stage compressor at inlet to the duct. Relative to the naturally developed inlet conditions the flow within the duct is less likely to separate, but mixing out of the compressor blade wakes increases the measured duct loss. With both types of inlet conditions the effect of a radial strut, such as that used for carrying loads and engine services, is also described both in terms of the static pressure distribution along the strut and its contribution to overall loss.

Color Response Modification of Encapsulated Liquid Crystals Used in Rotating Disk Heat Transfer Studies

The liquid crystal thermography can be successfully used in both transient and steady-state heat transfer experiments with excellent spatial resolution and good accuracy. Although most of the past liquid crystal based heat transfer studies are reported in the stationary frame, measurements from the rotating frame of turbomachinery systems exist The main objective of the present investigation is to determine the influence of rotation on the color calibration of encapsulated liquid crystals sprayed on the flat surface of a rotating aluminum disk. The investigation is performed for a rotational speed range from 0 rpm to 7500 rpm using three different liquid crystal coatings displaying red at 30, 35 and 45° C, under stationary conditions. An immediate observation from the present study is that the color response of liquid crystals is strongly modified by the centrifugal acceleration of the rotating environment. It is consistently and repeatedly observed that the hue versus temperature curve is continuously shifted toward lower temperatures by increasing rotational speed. The relative shift of the display temperature of the green can be as high as 7°C at 7500 rpm when compared to the temperature of the green observed under stationary conditions. The present study shows that relative shift of the liquid crystal color has a well-defined functional dependency to rotational speed. The shift is linearly proportional to the centrifugal acceleration. It is interesting to note that the individual shift curves of the green for all three liquid crystal coatings collapse into a single curve when they are normalized with respect to their own stationary green values. When the color attribute is selected as “intensity” instead of “hue”, very similar shifts of the temperature corresponding to the intensity maximum value appearing around green is observed. An interpretation of the observed color shift is made from a thermodynamics energy balance point of view.

Performance Improvement Through Indexing of Turbine Airfoils: Part 1 — Experimental Investigation

This paper describes the results of a study to determine the performance improvements achievable by circumferentially indexing successive rows of turbine stator airfoils. An experimental / analytical investigation has been completed which indicates significant stage efficiency increases can be attained through application of this airfoil clocking concept. A series of tests was conducted at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) to experimentally investigate stator wake clocking effects on the performance of the Space Shuttle Main Engine Alternate Fuel Turbopump Turbine Test Article. Extensive time-accurate Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations have been completed for the test configurations. The CFD results provide insight into the performance improvement mechanism. Part one of this paper describes details of the test facility, rig geometry, instrumentation, and aerodynamic operating parameters. Results of turbine testing at the aerodynamic design point are presented for six circumferential positions of the first stage stator, along with a description of the initial CFD analyses performed for the test article. It should be noted that first vane positions 1 and 6 produced identical first to second vane indexing. Results obtained from off-design testing of the “best” and “worst” stator clocking positions, and testing over a range of Reynolds numbers are also presented. Part two of this paper describes the numerical simulations performed in support of the experimental test program described in part one. Time-accurate Navier-Stokes flow analyses have been completed for the five different turbine stator positions tested. Details of the computational procedure and results are presented. Analysis results include predictions of instantaneous and time-average mid-span airfoil and turbine performance, as well as gas conditions throughout the flow field. An initial understanding of the turbine performance improvement mechanism is described.

Feasibility Study on Oil Droplet Flow Investigations Inside Aero Engine Bearing Chambers: PDPA Techniques in Combination With Numerical Approaches

The present paper deals with oil droplet now phenomena in aero engine bearing chambers. An experimental investigation of droplet sizes and velocities utilizing a Phase Doppler Particle Analyzer (PDPA) has been performed for the first time in bearing chamber atmospheres under real engine conditions. Influences of high rotational speeds are discussed for individual droplet size classes. Although this is an important contribution to a better understanding of the droplet flow impact on secondary air/oil system performance, an analysis of the droplet flow behaviour requires an incorporation of numerical methods because detailed measurements as performed here suffer from both strong spatial limitations with respect to the optical accessibility in real engine applications and constraints due to the extremely time consuming nature of an experimental flow field analysis. Therefore, further analysis is based on numerical methods. Droplets characterized within the experiments are exposed to the flow field of the gaseous phase predicted by use of our well-known CFD code EPOS. The droplet trajectories and velocities are calculated within a Lagrangian frame of reference by forward numerical integration of the particle momentum equation. This paper has been initiated rather to show a successful method of bearing chamber droplet flow analysis by a combination of droplet sizing techniques and numerical approaches than to present field values as a function of all operating parameters. However, a first insight into the complex droplet flow phenomena is given and specific problems in bearing chamber heat transfer are related to the droplet flow.

Navier-Stokes and Potential Calculations of Axial Spacing Effect on Vortical and Potential Disturbances and Gust Response in an Axial Compressor

The effect of blade row axial spacing on vortical and potential disturbances and gust response is studied for a compressor stator/rotor configuration near design and at high loadings using 2D incompressible Navier-Stokes and potential codes, both written for multistage calculations. First, vortical and potential disturbances downstream of the isolated stator in the moving frame are defined; these disturbances exclude blade row interaction effects. Then, vortical and potential disturbances for the stator/rotor configuration are calculated for axial gaps of 10%, 20%, and 30% chord. Results show that the potential disturbance is uncoupled; the potential disturbance calculated from the isolated stator configuration is a good approximation for that from the stator/rotor configuration for all three axial gaps. The vortical disturbance depends strongly on blade row interactions. Low order modes of vortical disturbance are of substantial magnitude and decay much more slowly downstream than do those of potential disturbance. Vortical disturbance decays linearly with increasing mode except very close to the stator trailing edge. For a small axial gap, lower order modes of both vortical and potential disturbances must be included to determine the rotor gust response.

Development and Application of a Multistage Navier-Stokes Solver: Part I — Multistage Modeling Using Bodyforces and Deterministic Stresses

A novel multistage compressor performance analysis method based on the three-dimensional Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes equations is presented in this paper. This approach is a “continuous interface plane approach” where deterministic stresses are used to ensure continuous physical properties across interface planes. The average unsteady effects due to neighboring blades and/or vanes are approximated using deterministic stresses along with the application of bodyforces. Bodyforces are used to account for the “potential” interaction between closely coupled (staged) rows. Deterministic stresses account for the “average” wake blockage and mixing effects both axially and radially. The attempt here is to implement an approximate technique for incorporating periodic unsteady flow physics that provides for a robust multistage design procedure incorporating reasonable computational efficiency. The present paper gives the theoretical development of the stress/bodyforce models incorporated in the code, and demonstrates the usefulness of these models in practical compressor applications. Compressor performance prediction capability is then established through a rigorous code/model validation effort using the power of networked workstations. The numerical results are compared with experimental data in terms of one-dimensional performance parameters such as total pressure ratio and circumferentially averaged radial profiles deemed critical to compressor design. This methodology allows the designer to design from hub to tip with a high level of confidence in the procedure.

Recessed Casing Treatment Effects on Fan Performance and Flow Field

An experimental investigation to examine the influence of the vaned recess casing treatment on stall margin, operating efficiency and the flow field of a low speed axial flow fan with aerospace type blade loading is presented. Different geometrical designs of the vaned passages were examined. The best configuration resulted in a stall margin improvement of 67%, a significantly higher pressure rise in the stall region and insignificant change in peak efficiency. Detailed 3-D flow measurements in the endwall region and in the casing recess were carried out with a slanted hot-wire, providing some insight to the operation of the device. The results revealed that the stall margin improvement was largely due to the removal of flow from the blade tip to the recess, and the elimination of the growth of the stall region at the tip, which occurs at stall in the solid casing build.