scholarly journals Reduction of Tip Clearance Losses Through 3-D Airfoil Designs

Author(s):  
J. Brent Staubach ◽  
Om P. Sharma ◽  
Gary M. Stetson

Results are presented from a program, conducted to investigate the impact of spanwise stacking of turbine airfoil sections on tip clearance flows. Numerical as well as physical experiments were performed to demonstrate that these airfoils yielded about 40% reduction in tip clearance losses compared to those designed with a conventional approach. Three dimensional, steady Euler and Reynolds Averaged Navier Stokes (RANS) codes were used to execute the numerical experiments. Initial physical experiments were performed in a water tunnel by using linear cascades to validate the design concepts. The verification of the overall design concepts was executed in an uncooled full scale rotating rig.

Author(s):  
Robert P. Dring ◽  
William D. Sprout ◽  
Harris D. Weingold

A three-dimensional Navier-Stokes calculation was used to analyze the impact of rotor tip clearance on the stall margin of a multi-stage axial compressor. This paper presents a summary of: (1) a study of the sensitivity of the results to grid refinement, (2) an assessment of the calculation’s ability to predict stall margin when the stalling row was the first rotor in a multi-stage rig environment, (3) an analysis of the impact of including the effects of the downstream stator through body force effects on the upstream rotor, and (4) the ability of the calculation to predict the impact of tip clearance on stall margin through a calculation of the rear seven airfoil rows of an eleven stage high pressure compressor rig. The result of these studies was that a practical tool is available which can predict stall margin, and the impact of tip clearance, with reasonable accuracy.


2008 ◽  
Vol 130 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Filippo Rubechini ◽  
Michele Marconcini ◽  
Andrea Arnone ◽  
Massimiliano Maritano ◽  
Stefano Cecchi

In this work a numerical investigation of a four stage heavy-duty gas turbine is presented. Fully three-dimensional, multistage, Navier-Stokes analyses are carried out to predict the overall turbine performance. Coolant injections, cavity purge flows, and leakage flows are included in the turbine modeling by means of suitable wall boundary conditions. The main objective is the evaluation of the impact of gas modeling on the prediction of the stage and turbine performance parameters. To this end, four different gas models were used: three models are based on the perfect gas assumption with different values of constant cp, and the fourth is a real gas model which accounts for thermodynamic gas properties variations with temperature and mean fuel∕air ratio distribution in the through-flow direction. For the real gas computations, a numerical model is used which is based on the use of gas property tables, and exploits a local fitting of gas data to compute thermodynamic properties. Experimental measurements are available for comparison purposes in terms of static pressure values at the inlet∕outlet of each row and total temperature at the turbine exit.


Author(s):  
Vijay K. Garg

A multi-block, three-dimensional Navier-Stokes code has been used to compute heat transfer coefficient on the blade, hub and shroud for a rotating high-pressure turbine blade with 172 film-cooling holes in eight rows. Film cooling effectiveness is also computed on the adiabatic blade. Wilcox’s k-ω model is used for modeling the turbulence. Of the eight rows of holes, three are staggered on the shower-head with compound-angled holes. With so many holes on the blade it was somewhat of a challenge to get a good quality grid on and around the blade and in the tip clearance region. The final multi-block grid consists of 4784 elementary blocks which were merged into 276 super blocks. The viscous grid has over 2.2 million cells. Each hole exit, in its true oval shape, has 80 cells within it so that coolant velocity, temperature, k and ω distributions can be specified at these hole exits. It is found that for the given parameters, heat transfer coefficient on the cooled, isothermal blade is highest in the leading edge region and in the tip region. Also, the effectiveness over the cooled, adiabatic blade is the lowest in these regions. Results for an uncooled blade are also shown, providing a direct comparison with those for the cooled blade. Also, the heat transfer coefficient is much higher on the shroud as compared to that on the hub for both the cooled and the uncooled cases.


Author(s):  
Daniel J. Dorney ◽  
Douglas L. Sondak

Experimental data have shown that combustor temperature non-uniformities can lead to the excessive heating of first-stage rotor blades in turbines. This heating of the rotor blades can lead to thermal fatigue and degrade turbine performance. The results of recent studies have shown that variations in the circumferential location, or clocking, of the first-stage vane airfoils can be used to minimize the adverse effects of the hot streaks due to the hot fluid mixing with the cooler fluid contained in the vane wake. In addition, the effects of the hot streak/airfoil count ratio on the heating patterns of turbine airfoils have been quantified. In the present investigation, three-dimensional unsteady Navier-Stokes simulations have been performed for a single-stage high-pressure turbine geometry operating in high subsonic flow to study the effects of tip clearance on hot streak migration. Baseline simulations were initially performed without hot streaks to compare with the experimental data. Two simulations were then performed with a superimposed combustor hot streak; in the first the tip clearance was set at the experimental value, while in the second the rotor was allowed to scrape along the outer case (i.e., the limit as the tip clearance goes to zero). The predicted results for the baseline simulations show good agreement with the available experimental data. The simulations with the hot streak indicate that the tip clearance increases the radial spreading of the hot fluid, and increases the integrated rotor surface temperature compared to the case without tip clearance.


Author(s):  
N. Lymberopoulos ◽  
K. Giannakoglou ◽  
I. Nikolaou ◽  
K. D. Papailiou ◽  
A. Tourlidakis ◽  
...  

Mechanical constraints dictate the existence of tip clearances in rotating cascades, resulting to a flow leakage through this clearance which considerably influences the efficiency and range of operation of the machine. Three-dimensional Navier-Stokes solvers are often used for the numerical study of compressor and turbine stages with tip-clearance. The quality of numerical predictions depends strongly on how accurately the blade tip region is modelled; in this respect the accurate modelling of tip region was one of the main goals of this work. In the present paper, a 3-D Navier-Stokes solver is suitably adapted so that the flat tip surface of a blade and its sharp edges could be accurately modelled, in order to improve the precision of the calculation in the tip region. The adapted code solves the fully elliptic, steady, Navier-Stokes equations through a space-marching algorithm and a pressure correction technique; the H-type topology is retained, even in cases with thick leading edges where a special treatment is introduced herein. The analysis is applied to two different cases, a linear cascade and a compressor rotor, and comparisons with experimental data are provided.


Author(s):  
J. Luo ◽  
B. Lakshminarayana

The 3-D viscous flowfield in the rotor passage of a single-stage turbine, including the tip-leakage flow, is computed using a Navier-Stokes procedure. A grid-generation code has been developed to obtain embedded H grids inside the rotor tip gap. The blade tip geometry is accurately modeled without any “pinching”. Chien’s low-Reynolds-number k-ε model is employed for turbulence closure. Both the mean-flow and turbulence transport equations are integrated in time using a four-stage Runge-Kutta scheme. The computational results for the entire turbine rotor flow, particularly the tip-leakage flow and the secondary flows, are interpreted and compared with available data. The predictions for major features of the flowfield are found to be in good agreement with the data. Complicated interactions between the tip-clearance flows and the secondary flows are examined in detail. The effects of endwall rotation on the development and interaction of secondary and tip-leakage vortices are also analyzed.


2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (A29A) ◽  
pp. 14-18
Author(s):  
A. Strugarek ◽  
A. S. Brun ◽  
S. P. Matt ◽  
V. Reville

AbstractThe possibility that magnetic torques may participate in close-in planet migration has recently been postulated. We develop three dimensional global models of magnetic star-planet interaction under the ideal magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) approximation to explore the impact of magnetic topology on the development of magnetic torques. We conduct twin numerical experiments in which only the magnetic topology of the interaction is altered. We find that magnetic torques can vary by roughly an order of magnitude when varying the magnetic topology from an aligned case to an anti-aligned case. Provided that the stellar magnetic field is strong enough, we find that magnetic migration time scales can be as fast as ~100 Myr. Hence, our model supports the idea that magnetic torques may participate in planet migration for some close-in star-planet systems.


Author(s):  
W. R. Briley ◽  
D. V. Roscoe ◽  
H. J. Gibeling ◽  
R. C. Buggeln ◽  
J. S. Sabnis ◽  
...  

Three-dimensional solutions of the ensemble-averaged Navier-Stokes equations have been computed for a high-turning turbine rotor passage, both with and without tip clearance effects. The geometry is Pratt & Whitney’s preliminary design for the Generic Gas Generator Turbine (GGGT), having an axial chord of 0.5 inch and turning angle of about 160 degrees. The solutions match the design Reynolds number of 3x 106/inch and design inflow/outflow distributions of flow quantities. The grid contains 627,000 points, including 20 radial points in the clearance gap of 0.015 inch, and has a minimum spacing of 10−4 inch adjacent to all surfaces. The solutions account for relative motion of the blade and shroud surfaces and include a backstep on the shroud. Computed results are presented which show the general flow behavior, especially near the tip clearance and backstep regions. The results are generally consistent with experimental observations for other geometries having thinner blades and smaller turning angles. The leakage flow includes some fluid originally in the freestream at 91 percent span. Downstream, the leakage flow behaves as a wall jet directed at 100 degrees to the main stream, with total pressure and temperature higher than the freestream. Radial distributions of circumferentially-averaged flow quantities are compared for solutions with and without tip leakage flow. Two-dimensional solutions are also presented for the mid-span blade geometry for design and off-design inflow angles.


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