Experimental Investigation During Stall and Surge in a Transonic Fan Stage and Rotor-Only Configuration

High-speed pressure measurements of a transonic compressor rotor-stator stage and rotor-only configuration during stall and surge are presented. Rotational speed data showed the difference between the rotor-only case and rotor-stator stage. The rotor-only case stalled and remained stalled until the control throttle was opened. In the rotor-stator stage the compressor surged entering a cyclical stalling and then un-stalling pattern. An array of pressure probes was mounted in the case wall over the rotor for both configurations of the machine. The fast response probes were sampled at 196 608 Hz as the rotor was driven into stall. Inspection of the raw data signal allowed the size and speed of the stall cell during its growth to be investigated. Post-processing of the simultaneous signals of the casing pressure showed the development of the stall cell from the point of inception and allowed the structure of the stall cell to be viewed.

Interaction of Wheelspace Coolant and Main Flow in a New Aeroderivative LPT

Increased computational capabilities make available for the aero/thermal designers new powerful tools to include more geometrical details, improving the accuracy of the simulations, and reducing design costs and time. In the present work, a low-pressure turbine was analyzed, modeling the rotor-stator including the wheel space region. Attention was focused on the interaction between the coolant and the main flow in order to obtain a more detailed understanding of the behavior of the angel wings, to evaluate the wall heat flux distribution, and to prevent hot gas ingestion. Issues of component reliability related to thermal stress require accurate modeling of the turbulence and unsteadiness of the flow field. To satisfy this accuracy requirement, a full 3D URANS simulation was carried out. A reduced count ratio technique was applied in order to decrease numerical simulation costs. The study was carried out to investigate a new two-stage Low Pressure Turbine from GE Infrastructure Oil&Gas to be coupled to a new aeroderivative gas generator, the LM2500+G4, developed by GE Infrastructure, Aviation.

Effect of Wake Passing on Unsteady Aerodynamic Performance in a Turbine Stage

In the present work, unsteady RANS simulations were performed to clarify several interesting features of the unsteady three-dimensional flow field in a turbine stage. The unsteady effect was investigated for two cases of axial spacing between stator and rotor, i.e. large and small axial spacing. Simulation results showed that the stator wake was convected from pressure side to suction side in the rotor. As a result, another secondary flow, which counter-rotated against the passage vortices, was periodically generated by the stator wake passing through the rotor passage. It was found that turbine stage efficiency with the small axial spacing was higher than that with the large axial spacing. This was because the stator wake in the small axial spacing case entered the rotor before mixing and induced the stronger counter-rotating vortices to suppress the passage vortices more effectively, while the wake in the large axial spacing case eventually promoted the growth of the secondary flow near the hub due to the migration of the wake towards the hub.

Profiled End-Wall Design Using an Adjoint Navier-Stokes Solver

A methodology to minimize blade secondary losses by modifying turbine end-walls is presented. The optimization is addressed using a gradient-based method, where the computation of the gradient is performed using an adjoint code and the secondary kinetic energy is used as a cost function. The adjoint code is implemented on the basis of the discrete formulation of a parallel multigrid unstructured mesh Navier-Stokes solver. The results of the optimization of two end-walls of a low pressure turbine row are shown.

Automated Blade Optimization and 3D CFD Analysis for an Axial Multistage GT Compressor Redesign

This paper focuses on (1) the basic compressor layout based on meridional through flow analysis and (2) the re-design of blades and vanes using sophisticated automated design optimization methods. All tools and processes are integrated into a consistent Compressor Design System, which runs on a powerful Linux cluster. This design system allows designing, analyzing and documenting blade design in mostly automated way. This frees the engineer from repetitive tasks and allows him to concentrate on a physical understanding and improvement of the compressor. The tools and methods are illustrated on the basis of an actual ALSTOM compressor. The main objectives of this upgrade are a modest increase in mass flow and an efficiency improvement. The latter is to be achieved through the replacement of NACA blades by modern Controlled Diffusion Airfoils (CDA). Results are presented including a CFD analysis of the front stages of the baseline and upgrade compressor.

The Development of an Aerodynamic Performance Prediction Tool for Modern Axial Flow Compressor Profiles

The development of a computational tool (MP-LOS) for the aerodynamic loss modeling and prediction for axial-flow compressor blade sections is presented in this paper. A state-of-the-art quasi 3-D flow solver, MISES, has been used for the flow analysis on existing airfoil geometries in many working conditions. Different values of inlet flow angle, inlet Mach number, AVDR, Reynolds number and solidity have been chosen to investigate a possible working range. The target is a loss prediction formulation that will be introduced into throughflow or axisymmetric Navier-Stokes codes for the performance prediction of multistage axial flow compressors. The loss coefficient has been correlated to the flow parameters that have shown an influence on the profile loss for the blades under study. The proposed correlation, using the described computational approach, can be extended to any profile family with the aid of any code for the parametric design of blade profiles.

Assessing Convergence in Predictions of Periodic-Unsteady Flowfields

Predictions of time-resolved flowfields are now commonplace within the gas-turbine industry, and the results of such simulations are often used to make design decisions during the development of new products. Hence it is necessary for design engineers to have a robust method to determine the level of convergence in design predictions. Here we report on a method developed to determine the level of convergence in a predicted flowfield that is characterized by periodic-unsteadiness. The method relies on fundamental concepts from digital signal processing including the discrete Fourier transform, cross-correlation, and Parseval’s theorem. Often in predictions of vane-blade interaction in turbomachines, the period of the unsteady fluctuations is expected. In this method, the development of time-mean quantities. Fourier components (both magnitude and phase), cross-correlations, and integrated signal power are tracked at locations of interest from one period to the next as the solution progresses. Each of these separate quantities yields some relative measure of convergence that is subsequently processed to form a fuzzy set. Thus the overall level of convergence in the solution is given by the intersection of these sets. Examples of the application of this technique to several predictions of unsteady flows from two separate solvers are given. These include a prediction of hot-streak migration as well as more typical cases. It is shown that the method yields a robust determination of convergence. Also, the results of the technique can guide further analysis and/or post-processing of the flowfield. Finally, the method is useful for the detection of inherent unsteadiness in the flowfield, and as such it can be used to prevent design escapes.

Effect of the Leakage Flows and the Upstream Platform Geometry on the Endwall Flows of a Turbine Cascade

This work describes the effect that the injection of leakage flow from a cavity into the mainstream has on the endwall flows and their interaction with a large pressure surface separation bubble in a low-pressure turbine. The effect of a step in hub diameter ahead of the blade row is also simulated. The blade profile under consideration is a typical design of modern low-pressure turbines. The tests are conducted in a low speed linear cascade. These are complemented by numerical simulations. Two different step geometries are investigated, i.e., a backward-facing step and a forward-facing step. The leakage tangential velocity and the leakage mass flow rate are also modified. It was found that the injection of leakage mass flow gives rise to a strengthening of the endwall flows independently of the leakage mass flow rate and the leakage tangential velocity. The experimental results have shown that below a critical value of the leakage tangential velocity, the net mixed-out endwall losses are not significantly altered by a change in the leakage tangential velocity. For these cases, the effect of the leakage mass flow is confined to the wall, as the inlet endwall boundary layer is pushed further away from the wall by the leakage flow. However, for values of the leakage tangential velocity around 100% of the wheelspeed, there is a large increase in losses due to a stronger interaction between the endwall flows and the leakage mass flow. This gives rise to a change in the endwall flows structure. In all cases, the presence of a forward-facing step produces a strengthening of the endwall flows and an increase of the net mixed-out endwall losses when compared with a backward-facing step. This is because of a strong interaction with the pressure surface separation bubble.

Investigation of the Flow Field in a HP Turbine Stage for Two Stator-Rotor Axial Gaps: Part II — Unsteady Flow Field

An extensive experimental analysis was carried out at Politecnico di Milano on the subject of unsteady flow in high pressure (HP) turbine stages. In this paper the unsteady flow measured downstream of a modern HP turbine stage is discussed. Traverses in two planes downstream of the rotor are considered and, in one of them, the effects of two very different axial gaps are investigated: the maximum axial gap, equal to one stator axial chord, is chosen to “switch off” the rotor inlet unsteadiness, while the nominal gap, equal to 1/3 of the stator axial chord, is representative of actual engines. The experiments were performed by means of a fast-response pressure probe, allowing for two-dimensional phase-resolved flow measurements in a bandwidth of 80 kHz. The main properties of the probe and the data processing are described. The core of the paper is the analysis of the unsteady rotor aerodynamics; for this purpose, instantaneous snapshots of the rotor flow in the relative frame are used. The rotor mean flow and its interaction with the stator wakes and vortices are also described. In the outer part of the channel only the rotor cascade effects can be observed, with a dominant role played by the tip-leakage flow and by the rotor tip passage vortex. In the hub region, where the secondary flows downstream of the stator are stronger, the persistence of stator vortices is slightly visible in the maximum stator-rotor axial gap configuration, while in the minimum stator-rotor axial gap configuration the interaction with the rotor vortices dominates the flow field. A fair agreement with the wakes and vortices transport models has been achieved. A discussion of the interaction process is reported giving particular emphasis to the effects of the different cascade axial gaps. Some final considerations on the effects of the different axial gap over the stage performances are reported.

Numerical Simulations of Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow for a Rotating High-Pressure Turbine

In this work, a numerical study has been performed to simulate the heat transfer and fluid flow in a transonic high-pressure turbine stator vane passage. Four turbulence models (the Spalart-Allmaras model, the low-Reynolds-number realizable k-ε model, the shear-stress transport (SST) k-ω model and the v2-f model) are used in order to assess the capability of the models to predict the heat transfer and pressure distributions. The simulations are performed using the FLUENT commercial software package, but also two other codes, the in-house code VolSol and the commercial code CFX are used for comparison with FLUENT results. The results of the three-dimensional simulations are compared with experimental heat transfer and aerodynamic results available for the so-called MT1 turbine stage. It is observed that the predictions of the vane pressure field agree well with experimental data, and that the pressure distribution along the profile is not strongly affected by choice of turbulence model. It is also shown that the v2-f model yields the best agreement with the measurements. None of the tested models are able to predict transition correctly.