Heat Transfer in Turbine Hub Cavities Adjacent to the Main Gas Path

2012 ◽  
Vol 135 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey A. Dixon ◽  
Antonio Guijarro Valencia ◽  
Andreas Bauknecht ◽  
Daniel Coren ◽  
Nick Atkins

Reliable means of predicting heat transfer in cavities adjacent to the main gas path are increasingly being sought by engineers involved in the design of gas turbines. In this paper, an interim summary of the results of a five-year research program sponsored by the European Union (EU) and several leading gas turbine manufacturers and universities will be presented. Extensive use is made of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and finite element (FE) modeling techniques to understand the thermo-mechanical behavior of a turbine stator well cavity, including the interaction of cooling air supply with the main annulus gas. The objective of the study has been to provide a means of optimizing the design of such cavities for maintaining a safe environment for critical parts, such as disc rims and blade fixings, while maximizing the turbine efficiency and minimizing the fuel burn and emissions penalties associated with the secondary airflow system. The modeling methods employed have been validated against data gathered from a dedicated two-stage turbine rig running at engine representative conditions. Extensive measurements are available for a range of flow conditions and alternative cooling arrangements. The analysis method has been used to inform a design change, which is also to be tested. Comparisons are provided between the predictions and measurements of the turbine stator well component temperature.

Author(s):  
Jeffrey A. Dixon ◽  
Antonio Guijarro ◽  
Andreas Bauknecht ◽  
Daniel Coren ◽  
Nick Atkins

Reliable means of predicting heat transfer in cavities adjacent to the main gas path are increasingly being sought by engineers involved in the design of gas turbines. In this paper an interim summary of the results of a four-year research programme sponsored by the EU and several leading gas turbine manufactures and universities will be presented. Extensive use is made of CFD and FE modelling techniques to understand the thermo-mechanical behaviour of a turbine stator well cavity, including the interaction of cooling air supply with the main annulus gas (see Figure 1). The objective of the study has been to provide a means of optimising the design of such cavities for maintaining a safe environment for critical parts, such as disc rims and blade fixings, whilst maximising the turbine efficiency, and minimising the fuel burn and emissions penalties associated with the secondary airflow system. The modelling methods employed have been validated against data gathered from a dedicated two-stage turbine rig, running at engine representative conditions. Extensive measurements are available for a range of flow conditions and alternative cooling arrangements. The analysis method has been used to inform a design change which is also to be tested. Comparisons are provided between the predictions and measurements of the turbine stator well component temperature.


Author(s):  
Antonio Guijarro Valencia ◽  
Jeffrey A. Dixon ◽  
Attilio Guardini ◽  
Daniel D. Coren ◽  
Daniel Eastwood

Reliable means of predicting heat transfer in cavities adjacent to the main gas path are increasingly being sought by engineers involved in the design of gas turbines. In this paper an up-dated analysis of the interim results from an extended research programme, MAGPI, sponsored by the EU and several leading gas turbine manufactures and universities, will be presented. Extensive use is made of CFD and FE modelling techniques to understand the thermo-mechanical behaviour and convective heat transfer of a turbine stator well cavity, including the interaction of cooling air supply with the main annulus gas. It is also important to establish the hot running seal clearances for a full understanding of the cooling flow distribution and heat transfer in the cavity. The objective of the study has been to provide a means of optimising the design of such cavities (see Figure 1) for maintaining a safe environment for critical parts, such as disc rims and blade fixings, whilst maximising the turbine efficiency by means of reducing the fuel burn and emissions penalties associated with the secondary airflow system. The modelling methods employed have been validated against data gathered from a dedicated two-stage turbine rig, running at engine representative conditions. Extensive measurements are available for a range of flow conditions and alternative cooling arrangements. The analysis method has been used to inform a design change which will be tested in a second test phase. Data from this test will also be used to further benchmark the analysis method. Comparisons are provided between the predictions and measurements from the original configuration, turbine stator well component temperature survey, including the use of a coupled analysis technique between FE and CFD solutions.


Author(s):  
Gaowen Liu ◽  
Zhao Lei ◽  
Aqiang Lin ◽  
Qing Feng ◽  
Yan Chen

The pre-swirl system is of great importance for temperature drop and cooling air supply. This study aims to investigate the influencing mechanism of heat transfer, nonuniform thermodynamic characteristics, and cooling air supply sensitivity in a pre-swirl system by the application of the flow control method of the pre-swirl nozzle. A novel test rig was proposed to actively control the supplied cooling air mass flow rate by three adjustable pre-swirl nozzles. Then, the transient problem of the pre-swirl system was numerically conducted by comparison with 60°, 120°, and 180° rotating disk cavity cases, which were verified with the experiment results. Results show that the partial nozzle closure will aggravate the fluctuation of air supply mass flow rate and temperature. When three parts of nozzles are closed evenly at 120° in the circumferential direction, the maximum value of the nonuniformity coefficient of air supply mass flow rate changes to 3.1% and that of temperature changes to 0.25%. When six parts of nozzles are closed evenly at 60° in the circumferential direction, the maximum nonuniformity coefficient of air supply mass flow rate changes to 1.4% and that of temperature changes to 0.20%. However, different partial nozzle closure modes have little effect on the average air supply parameters. Closing 14.3% of the nozzle area will reduce the air supply mass flow rate by 9.9% and the average air supply temperature by about 1 K.


2010 ◽  
Vol 133 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio Andreini ◽  
Riccardo Da Soghe ◽  
Bruno Facchini

The increase of aeroengine performance through the improvement of aerodynamic efficiency of core flow is becoming more and more difficult to achieve. However, there are still some devices that could be improved to enhance global engine efficiency. Particularly, investigations on the internal air cooling systems may lead to a reduction of cooling air with a direct benefit to the overall performance. At the same time, further investigations on heat transfer mechanisms within turbine cavities may help to optimize cooling air flows, saving engine life duration. This paper presents a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) study aimed at the characterization of the effects of different geometries for cooling air supply within turbine cavities on wall thermal effectiveness and sealing mass flow rate. Several sealing air supply geometries were considered in order to point out the role of cooling air injection position, swirl number, and jet penetration on the cavities’ sealing performance. Steady state calculations were performed using two different computational domains: the first consists of a sector model of the whole turbine including the second stator well, while the second is a cut-down model of the stator well. Thanks to the simplified geometry of the test rig with respect to actual engines, the study has pointed out clear design suggestions regarding the effects of geometry modification of cooling air supply systems.


1997 ◽  
Vol 119 (2) ◽  
pp. 364-373 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Wilson ◽  
R. Pilbrow ◽  
J. M. Owen

Conditions in the internal-air system of a high-pressure turbine stage are modeled using a rig comprising an outer preswirl chamber separated by a seal from an inner rotor-stator system. Preswirl nozzles in the stator supply the “blade-cooling” air, which leaves the system via holes in the rotor, and disk-cooling air enters at the center of the system and leaves through clearances in the peripheral seals. The experimental rig is instrumented with thermocouples, fluxmeters, pitot tubes, and pressure taps, enabling temperatures, heat fluxes, velocities, and pressures to be measured at a number of radial locations. For rotational Reynolds numbers of Reφ ≃ 1.2 × 106, the swirl ratio and the ratios of disk-cooling and blade-cooling flow rates are chosen to be representative of those found inside gas turbines. Measured radial distributions of velocity, temperature, and Nusselt number are compared with computations obtained from an axisymmetric elliptic solver, featuring a low-Reynolds-number k–ε turbulence model. For the inner rotor-stator system, the computed core temperatures and velocities are in good agreement with measured values, but the Nusselt numbers are underpredicted. For the outer preswirl chamber, it was possible to make comparisons between the measured and computed values for cooling-air temperatures but not for the Nusselt numbers. As expected, the temperature of the blade-cooling air decreases as the inlet swirl ratio increases, but the computed air temperatures are significantly lower than the measured ones. Overall, the results give valuable insight into some of the heat transfer characteristics of this complex system.


2012 ◽  
Vol 2012 ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Riccardo Da Soghe ◽  
Bruno Facchini ◽  
Mirko Micio ◽  
Antonio Andreini

Heat transfer and pressure drop for a representative part of a turbine active cooling system were numerically investigated by means of an in-house code. This code has been developed in the framework of an internal research program and has been validated by experiments and CFD. The analysed system represents the classical open bird cage arrangement that consists of an air supply pipe with a control valve and the present system with a collector box and pipes, which distribute cooling air in circumferential direction of the casing. The cooling air leaves the ACC system through small holes at the bottom of the tubes. These tubes extend at about 180° around the casing and may involve a huge number of impinging holes; as a consequence, the impinging jets mass flow rate may vary considerably along the feeding manifold with a direct impact on the achievable heat transfer levels. This study focuses on the performance, in terms of heat transfer coefficient and pressure drop, of several impinging tube geometries. As a result of this analysis, several design solutions have been compared and discussed.


Author(s):  
Antonio Andreini ◽  
Riccardo Da Soghe ◽  
Bruno Facchini ◽  
Stefano Zecchi

The improvement of the aerodynamic efficiency of gas turbine components is becoming more and more difficult to achieve. Nevertheless there are still some devices that could be improved to enhance engine performance. Further investigations on the internal air cooling systems, for instance, may lead to a reduction of cavities cooling air with a direct beneficial effect on engine performance. At the same time, further investigations on heat transfer mechanisms within turbine cavities may help to optimize cooling air flows saving engine life duration. This paper presents some CFD preliminary studies conducted on an two-stage axial turbine rig developed in a research programme on internal air systems funded by EU, named the Main Annulus Gas Path Interactions (MAGPI). Each turbine stage consists of 39 vanes and 78 rotating blades and the modelled domain includes both the main gas path of the two turbine stages and the second stator well. Pre experimental tests CFD computations were planned in order to point out the reliability of numerical models in the description of the flow patterns in the main annulus and in the cavities. Several computational meshes were considered with steady and unsteady approaches in order to assess the sensitivity to computational approach regarding the evaluation of the interactions between main annulus and disk cavities flows. Results were obtained for several cavities cooling air mass-flow rates and data were further analyzed to investigate the influence of the sealing flow inside the main annulus. MAGPI project is a 4 years Specific-Targeted-Research-Project (2007–2011) and its consortium includes six universities and nine gas turbines manufacturing companies. The project is focused on the analysis of interactions between primary and secondary air systems achieving a novel approach as these systems have, up to now, only been considered separately. In particular one of the tasks of the project will focus on heat transfer phenomena and delivering experimental data which will be used to validate the advanced design tools used by industries (CFD codes and correlative formulations).


Author(s):  
Hui Tang ◽  
J. Michael Owen

The cavities between the rotating compressor discs in aeroengines are open, and there is an axial throughflow of cooling air in the annular space between the centre of the discs and the central rotating compressor shaft. Buoyancy-induced flow occurs inside these open rotating cavities, with an exchange of heat and momentum between the axial throughflow and the air inside the cavity. However, even where there is no opening at the centre of the compressor discs — as is the case in some industrial gas turbines — buoyancy-induced flow can still occur inside the closed rotating cavities. The closed cavity also provides a limiting case for an open cavity when the axial clearance between the cobs — the bulbous hubs at the centre of compressor discs — is reduced to zero. Bohn and his co-workers at the University of Aachen have studied three different closed-cavity geometries, and they have published experimental data for the case where the outer cylindrical surface is heated and the inner surface is cooled. In this paper, a buoyancy model is developed in which it is assumed that the heat transfer from the cylindrical surfaces is analogous to laminar free convection from horizontal plates, with the gravitational acceleration replaced by the centripetal acceleration. The resulting equations, which have been solved analytically, show how the Nusselt numbers depend on both the geometry of the cavity and its rotational speed. The theoretical solutions show that compressibility effects in the core attenuate the Nusselt numbers, and there is a critical Reynolds number at which the Nusselt number will be a maximum. For the three cavities tested, the predicted Nusselt numbers are in generally good agreement with the measured values of Bohn et al. over a large range of Raleigh numbers up to values approaching 1012. The fact that the flow remains laminar even at these high Rayleigh numbers is attributed to the Coriolis accelerations suppressing turbulence in the cavity, which is consistent with recently-published results for open rotating cavities.


Author(s):  
Kuo-San Ho ◽  
Jong Liu ◽  
Christopher Urwiller ◽  
S. Murthy Konan ◽  
Bruno Aguilar

In recent years, conjugate heat transfer (CHT) computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation in turbomachinery played an important role in predicting metal temperature. Most of research papers of CHT CFD simulation were emphasized on the mixing plane method. In this paper the ANSYS CFX 14.0 CHT simulation using the frozen rotor approach is employed to predict the blade temperatures. The frozen rotor included five time instances in which the stator-rotor wake influence could be captured. In this study, the temperature predictions using the frozen rotor approach were compared to the mixing plane predictions and Silicon Carbide (SiC) chip measurements on three different radial spans. The frozen rotor results predicted the minimum and maximum temperatures that bounded the SiC chip data. Compared to the mixing plane predictions, the frozen rotor approach results were similar within 8 K at the mid-span. However, the frozen rotor approach provided more insight information and detailed guidance for model calibration. Finally several future works were suggested to continue striving for high performance gas turbines.


Author(s):  
Junting Xiang ◽  
Jörg Uwe Schlüter ◽  
Fei Duan

In the present work, we focus on computational investigations of the Reynolds number effect and the wall heat transfer on the performance of axial compressor during its miniaturization. The NASA stage 35 compressor is selected as the configuration in this study and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is used to carry out the miniaturization process and simulations. We perform parameter studies on the effect of Reynolds number and wall thermal conditions. Our results indicate a decrease of efficiency, if the compressor is miniaturized based on its original geometry due to the increase of viscous effects. The increased heat transfer through wall has only a small effect and will actually benefit compressor performance based on our study.


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