Measurement and Analysis of Buoyancy-Induced Heat Transfer in Aero-Engine Compressor Rotors

Author(s):  
Richard Jackson ◽  
Dario Luberti ◽  
Hui Tang ◽  
Oliver J Pountney ◽  
James Scobie ◽  
...  

Abstract The flow inside cavities between co-rotating compressor discs of aero-engines is driven by buoyancy, with Grashof numbers exceeding 1013. This phenomenon creates a conjugate problem: the Nusselt numbers depend on the radial temperature distribution of the discs, and the disc temperatures depend on the Nusselt numbers. Furthermore, Coriolis forces in the rotating fluid generate cyclonic and anti-cyclonic circulations inside the cavity. Such flows are three-dimensional, unsteady and unstable, and it is a challenge to compute and measure the heat transfer from the discs to the axial throughflow in the compressor. In this paper, Nusselt numbers are experimentally determined from measurements of steady-state temperatures on the surfaces of both discs in a rotating cavity of the Bath Compressor-Cavity Rig. The data are collected over a range of engine-representative parameters and are the first results from a new experimental facility specifically designed to investigate buoyancy-induced flow. The radial distributions of disc temperature were collected under carefully-controlled thermal boundary conditions appropriate for analysis using a Bayesian model combined with the equations for a circular fin. The Owen-Tang buoyancy model has been used to compare predicted radial distributions of disc temperatures and Nusselt numbers with some of the experimentally determined values, taking account of radiation between the interior surfaces of the cavity. The experiments show that the average Nusselt numbers on the disc increase as the buoyancy forces increase. At high rotational speeds the temperature rise in the core, created by compressibility effects in

Author(s):  
Richard W. Jackson ◽  
Dario Luberti ◽  
Hui Tang ◽  
Oliver J. Pountney ◽  
James A. Scobie ◽  
...  

Abstract The flow inside cavities between co-rotating compressor discs of aero-engines is driven by buoyancy, with Grashof numbers exceeding 1013. This phenomenon creates a conjugate problem: the Nusselt numbers depend on the radial temperature distribution of the discs, and the disc temperatures depend on the Nusselt numbers. Furthermore, Coriolis forces in the rotating fluid generate cyclonic and anti-cyclonic circulations inside the cavity. Such flows are three-dimensional, unsteady and unstable, and it is a challenge to compute and measure the heat transfer from the discs to the axial throughflow in the compressor. In this paper, Nusselt numbers are experimentally determined from measurements of steady-state temperatures on the surfaces of both discs in a rotating cavity of the Bath Compressor-Cavity Rig. The data are collected over a range of engine-representative parameters and are the first results from a new experimental facility specifically designed to investigate buoyancy-induced flow. The radial distributions of disc temperature were collected under carefully-controlled thermal boundary conditions appropriate for analysis using a Bayesian model combined with the equations for a circular fin. The Owen-Tang buoyancy model has been used to compare predicted radial distributions of disc temperatures and Nusselt numbers with some of the experimentally determined values, taking account of radiation between the interior surfaces of the cavity. The experiments show that the average Nusselt numbers on the disc increase as the buoyancy forces increase. At high rotational speeds the temperature rise in the core, created by compressibility effects in the air, attenuates the heat transfer and there is a critical rotational Reynolds number for which the Nusselt number is a maximum. In the cavity, there is an inner region dominated by forced convection and an outer region dominated by buoyancy-induced flow. The inner region is a mixing region, in which entrained cold throughflow encounters hot flow from the Ekman layers on the discs. Consequently, the Nusselt numbers on the downstream disc in the inner region tend to be higher than those on the upstream disc.


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

The cavities between the rotating compressor disks in aero-engines are open, and there is an axial throughflow of cooling air in the annular space between the center of the disks 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 center of the compressor disks—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 center of compressor disks—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):  
Hui Tang ◽  
Tony Shardlow ◽  
J. Michael Owen

Conduction in thin discs can be modelled using the fin equation, and there are analytical solutions of this equation for a circular disc with a constant heat-transfer coefficient. However, convection (particularly free convection) in rotating-disc systems is a conjugate problem: the heat transfer in the fluid and the solid are coupled, and the relative effects of conduction and convection are related to the Biot number, Bi, which in turn is related to the Nusselt number. In principle, if the radial distribution of the disc temperature is known then Bi can be determined numerically. But the determination of heat flux from temperature measurements is an example of an inverse problem where small uncertainties in the temperatures can create large uncertainties in the computed heat flux. In this paper, Bayesian statistics are applied to the inverse solution of the circular fin equation to produce reliable estimates of Bi for rotating discs, and numerical experiments using simulated noisy temperature measurements are used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the Bayesian method. Using published experimental temperature measurements, the method is also applied to the conjugate problem of buoyancy-induced flow in the cavity between corotating compressor discs.


2015 ◽  
Vol 137 (12) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hui Tang ◽  
Tony Shardlow ◽  
J. Michael Owen

Conduction in thin disks can be modeled using the fin equation, and there are analytical solutions of this equation for a circular disk with a constant heat-transfer coefficient. However, convection (particularly free convection) in rotating-disk systems is a conjugate problem: the heat transfer in the fluid and the solid are coupled, and the relative effects of conduction and convection are related to the Biot number,  Bi, which in turn is related to the Nusselt number. In principle, if the radial distribution of the disk temperature is known then Bi  can be determined numerically. But the determination of heat flux from temperature measurements is an example of an inverse problem where small uncertainties in the temperatures can create large uncertainties in the computed heat flux. In this paper, Bayesian statistics are applied to the inverse solution of the circular fin equation to produce reliable estimates of Bi for rotating disks, and numerical experiments using simulated noisy temperature measurements are used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the Bayesian method. Using published experimental temperature measurements, the method is also applied to the conjugate problem of buoyancy-induced flow in the cavity between corotating compressor disks.


1992 ◽  
Vol 114 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. W. Webb ◽  
T. L. Bergman

Natural convection in an enclosure with a uniform heat flux on two vertical surfaces and constant temperature at the adjoining walls has been investigated both experimentally and theoretically. The thermal boundary conditions and enclosure geometry render the buoyancy-induced flow and heat transfer inherently three dimensional. The experimental measurements include temperature distributions of the isoflux walls obtained using an infrared thermal imaging technique, while the three-dimensional equations governing conservation of mass, momentum, and energy were solved using a control volume-based finite difference scheme. Measurements and predictions are in good agreement and the model predictions reveal strongly three-dimensional flow in the enclosure, as well as high local heat transfer rates at the edges of the isoflux wall. Predicted average heat transfer rates were correlated over a range of the relevant dimensionless parameters.


1995 ◽  
Vol 117 (4) ◽  
pp. 910-917 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. J. Heindel ◽  
F. P. Incropera ◽  
S. Ramadhyani

Three-dimensional numerical predictions and experimental data have been obtained for natural convection from a 3 × 3 array of discrete heat sources flush-mounted on one vertical wall of a rectangular cavity and cooled by the opposing wall. Predictions performed in a companion paper (Heindel et al., 1995a) revealed that three-dimensional edge effects are significant and that, with increasing Rayleigh number, flow and heat transfer become more uniform across each heater face. The three-dimensional predictions are in excellent agreement with the data of this study, whereas a two-dimensional model of the experimental geometry underpredicts average heat transfer by as much as 20 percent. Experimental row-averaged Nusselt numbers are well correlated with a Rayleigh number exponent of 0.25 for RaLz ≲ 1.2 × 108.


2004 ◽  
Vol 126 (4) ◽  
pp. 519-523 ◽  
Author(s):  
Siddharth Bhopte ◽  
Musa S. Alshuqairi ◽  
Dereje Agonafer ◽  
Gamal Refai-Ahmed

The current numerical investigation will examine the effect of an impinging mixed convection air jet on the heat transfer rate of a parallel flat plate heat sink. A three-dimensional numerical model was developed to evaluate the effects of the nozzle diameter d, nozzle-to-target vertical placement H/d, Rayleigh number, and the jet Reynolds number on the heat transfer rates from a discrete heat source. Simulations were performed for a Prandtl number of 0.7 and for Reynolds numbers ranging from 100 to 5000. The governing equations were solved in the dimensionless form using a commercial finite-volume package. Average Nusselt numbers were obtained, at H/d=3 and two jet diameters, for the bare heat source, for the heat source with a base heat sink, and for the heat source with the finned heat sink. The heat transfer rates from the bare heat source surface have been compared with the ones obtained with the heat sink in order to determine the overall performance of the heat sink in an impingement configuration.


1980 ◽  
Vol 102 (4) ◽  
pp. 590-597 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. A. C. Altemani ◽  
E. M. Sparrow

Experiments were performed to determine entrance-region and fully developed heat transfer characteristics for turbulent airflow in an unsymmetrically heated equilateral triangular duct; friction factors were also measured. Two of the walls were heated while the third was not directly heated. The resulting thermal boundary conditions consisted of uniform heating per unit axial length and circumferentially uniform temperature on the heated walls. Special techniques were employed to minimize extraneous heat losses, and numerical finite-difference solutions played an important role in both the design of the apparatus and in the data reduction. The thermal entrance lengths required to attain thermally developed conditions were found to increase markedly with the Reynolds number and were generally greater than those for conventional pipe flows—a behavior which can be attributed to the unsymmetric heating. The fully developed Nusselt numbers were compared with circular tube correlations from the literature, from which it was shown that the hydraulic diameter is not fully sufficient to rationalize the circular and noncircular duct results. However, excellent Nusselt number predictions were obtained by employing the Petukhov-Popou correlation in conjunction with the measured friction factors for the triangular duct. This approach may have general applicability for predicting noncircular duct heat transfer. The friction factor results also affirmed the inadequacies of the hydraulic diameter but supported a general noncircular duct correlation available in the literature.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Patrick K. Dubois ◽  
Alexandre Landry-Blais ◽  
Rym Gazzah ◽  
Sani Sivic ◽  
Vladimir Brailovski ◽  
...  

Abstract The Inside-out ceramic turbine (ICT), a novel microturbine rotor architecture, has an air-cooled ring which keeps its composite rotating structural shroud within operating temperature. The cooling ring must achieve a significant radial temperature gradient with a minimal amount of cooling. The cooling ring is made through additive manufacturing, which opens the design space to tailored cooling geometries. Additively manufactured pin fin heat transfer enhancers are explored in this work to assess whether they hold any significant performance benefit over current rectangular cross-section open channels. Experimental friction factors and Nusselt numbers were determined for small, densely-packed pin fins over an asymmetrical thermal load. Results indicate that pressure loss is similar to what can be expected for additively manufactured pin fins, whereas heat transfer is lower due to the extremely tight streamwise pin spacing, in both in-line and staggered pin configurations. A design study presented in this paper suggests that pin fins are beneficial to an ICT for reducing cooling mass flow rate up to 40 %, against an increase in cooling ring mass of roughly 50%.


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.


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