Experimental Evaluation of Cavitating Venturi as a Passive Flow Controller in Different Sizes

Author(s):  
Hamidreza Farshi Fasih ◽  
Hojat Ghassemi

The cavitating venturi is using to provide constant mass flow rate of liquid which is passing through a passage, independent of downstream pressure changes. A cavitating venturi is a converging-diverging nozzle with a suitable throat area for passing flow. The flow rate is a function of the upstream pressure, the throat area, the density and saturated pressure of the liquid. An experimental setup with the capability of supplying constant water flow rate, upstream pressure and temperature was designed and manufactured. Three cavitating venturies were designed and built to investigate the effect of cavitating venturi size on its mass flow rate and capability of performance venturi in wide ranges of flow rates. Three different sets of experiments were conducted to ensure the performance of the venturi to keep constant mass flow rate independent of downstream pressure. In the experiments, under different downstream and upstream pressure conditions, the mass flow rates were examined. The results show that if the ratio of downstream pressure to upstream pressure is less than 0.8, the mass flow rate is constant and independent of the downstream pressure. Whenever pressure ratio exceeds from 0.8, the venturi acts like an orifice.

Author(s):  
Dmytro M. Voytovych ◽  
Guoping Xia ◽  
Chenzhou Lian ◽  
Charles L. Merkle

The flow analysis around blades of a transonic fan is presented for both clean and radially distorted inlets. Computations are shown for four-blade passages that are accomplished with a second order accurate code using a k-ω turbulence model. The mass flow rate along a speed line is controlled by varying a choked nozzle downstream of the fan. The results show good agreement with data for three speed lines. In the near-stall region, the flow first becomes unsteady and then unstable with the unsteadiness increasing at lower speeds. The four-blade simulations remained stable to lower mass flow rates than the single-blade simulations. In the near-stall vicinity, tip vortex breakdown occurred creating a low momentum zone near the blade tip on the pressure side that grew as the mass flow was decreased until it eventually blocked the passage. The presence of distortion reduced the operational range and moved the stall line to higher mass flow rates. At high speeds distortion reduced both the mass flow rate and total pressure ratio while at lower speeds, the choking mass flow rate was reduced, but the total pressure ratio was slightly improved. The flow separation near the hub on the suction side was caused by the distortion. Its size was decreasing with rotational speed.


Materials ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (8) ◽  
pp. 2033
Author(s):  
Amjid Khan ◽  
Muhammad Irfan ◽  
Usama Muhammad Niazi ◽  
Imran Shah ◽  
Stanislaw Legutko ◽  
...  

Downsizing in engine size is pushing the automotive industry to operate compressors at low mass flow rate. However, the operation of turbocharger centrifugal compressor at low mass flow rate leads to fluid flow instabilities such as stall. To reduce flow instability, surface roughness is employed as a passive flow control method. This paper evaluates the effect of surface roughness on a turbocharger centrifugal compressor performance. A realistic validation of SRV2-O compressor stage designed and developed by German Aerospace Center (DLR) is achieved from comparison with the experimental data. In the first part, numerical simulations have been performed from stall to choke to study the overall performance variation at design conditions: 2.55 kg/s mass flow rate and rotational speed of 50,000 rpm. In second part, surface roughness of magnitude range 0–200 μm has been applied on the diffuser shroud to control flow instability. It was found that completely rough regime showed effective quantitative results in controlling stall phenomena, which results in increases of operating range from 16% to 18% and stall margin from 5.62% to 7.98%. Surface roughness as a passive flow control method to reduce flow instability in the diffuser section is the novelty of this research. Keeping in view the effects of surface roughness, it will help the turbocharger manufacturers to reduce the flow instabilities in the compressor with ease and improve the overall performance.


Author(s):  
Nan Liang ◽  
Changqing Tian ◽  
Shuangquan Shao

As one kind of fluid machinery related to the two-phase flow, the refrigeration system encounters more problems of instability. It is essential to ensure the stability of the refrigeration systems for the operation and efficiency. This paper presents the experimental investigation on the static and dynamic instability in an evaporator of refrigeration system. The static instability experiments showed that the oscillatory period and swing of the mixture-vapor transition point by observation with a camera through the transparent quartz glass tube at the outlet of the evaporator. The pressure drop versus mass flow rate curves of refrigerant two phase flow in the evaporator were obtained with a negative slope region in addition to two positive slope regions, thus making the flow rate a multi-valued function of the pressure drop. For dynamic instabilities in the evaporation process, three types of oscillations (density wave type, pressure drop type and thermal type) were observed at different mass flow rates and heat fluxes, which can be represented in the pressure drop versus mass flow rate curves. For the dynamic instabilities, density wave oscillations happen when the heat flux is high with the constant mass flow rate. Thermal oscillations happen when the heat flux is correspondingly low with constant mass flow rate. Though the refrigeration system do not have special tank, the accumulator and receiver provide enough compressible volume to induce the pressure drop oscillations. The representation and characteristic of each oscillation type were also analyzed in the paper.


Author(s):  
Ali Mohammadi ◽  
Masoud Boroomand

This paper presents the design procedure of a ducted contra-rotating axial flow fan and investigates the flow behavior inside it using ANSYS CFX-15 flow solver. This study investigates parameters such as pressure ratio, inlet mass flow rate and efficiency in different operating points. This system consists of two rotors with an outer diameter of 434 mm and an inner diameter of 260 mm which rotate contrary to each other with independent nominal rotational speeds of 1300 rpm. Blades’ maximum thickness and rotational speeds of each rotor will be altered as well as the axial distance between the two rotors to investigate their effect on the overall performance of the system. Designed to deliver a total pressure ratio of 1.005 and a mass flow rate of 1.8 kg/s at nominal rotational speeds, this system proves to be much more efficient compared to the conventional rotor-stator fans. NACA-65 airfoils are used in this analysis with the necessary adjustments at each section. Inverse design method is used for the first rotor and geometrical constraints are employed for the second one to have an axial inlet and outlet flow without using any inlet or outlet guide vanes. Using free vortex swirl distribution method, characteristic parameters and the necessary data for 3D generation of this model are obtained. The appropriate grid is generated using ATM method in ANSYS TurboGrid and the model is simulated in CFX-15 flow solver by employing k-ε turbulence model in the steady state condition. Both design algorithm and simulation analysis confirm the high anticipated efficiency for this system. The accuracy of the design algorithm will be explored and the most optimum operating points in different rotational speed ratios and axial distances will be identified. By altering the outlet static pressure of the system, the characteristic map is obtained.


Author(s):  
M. K. Mittal ◽  
R. Kumar ◽  
A. Gupta

The objective of this study is to investigate the effect of coiling on the flow characteristics of R-407C in an adiabatic spiral capillary tube. The characteristic coiling parameter for a spiral capillary tube is the coil pitch; hence, the effect of the coil pitch on the mass flow rate of R-407C was studied on several capillary tube test sections. It was observed that the coiling of the capillary tube significantly reduced the mass flow rate of R-407C in the adiabatic spiral capillary tube. In order to quantify the effect of coiling, the experiments were also conducted for straight a capillary tube, and it was observed that the coiling of the capillary tube reduced the mass flow rate in the spiral tube in the range of 9–18% as compared with that in the straight capillary tube. A generalized nondimensional correlation for the prediction of the mass flow rates of various refrigerants was developed for the straight capillary tube on the basis of the experimental data of R-407C of the present study, and the data of R-134a, R-22, and R-410A measured by other researchers. Additionally, a refrigerant-specific correlation for the spiral capillary was also proposed on the basis of the experimental data of R-407C of the present study.


Author(s):  
Hemant Kumar ◽  
Chetan S. Mistry

Abstract The Supercritical carbon-dioxide Brayton cycle main attraction is due to the Supercritical characteristic of the working fluid, carbon-dioxide (SCO2). Some of the advantages of using SCO2 are relatively low turbine inlet temperature, the compression work will be low, and the system will be compact due to the variation of thermodynamic properties (like density, and specific heat ratio) of SCO2 near the critical point. SCO2 behave more like liquid when its state is near the critical point (Total Pressure = 7.39 MPa, Total Temperature = 305 K), operating compressor inlet near critical point can minimize compression work. For present study the centrifugal compressor was designed to operate at 75,000 rpm with pressure ratio (P.R) = 1.8 and mass flow rate = 3.53 kg/s as available from Sandai report. Meanline design for centrifugal compressor with SCO2 properties was done. The blade geometry was developed using commercial CAD Ansys Bladegen. The flow domain was meshed using Ansys TurboGrid. ANSYS CFX was used as a solver for present numerical study. The thermodynamic properties of SCO2 were imported from the ANSYS flow material library using SCO2.RPG [NIST thermal physics properties of fluid system]. In order to ensure the change in flow physics the mesh independence study was also conducted. The present paper discuss about the performance and flow field study targeting different mass flow rates as exit boundary condition. The comparison of overall performance (Pressure Ratio, the Blade loading, Stage efficiency and Density variation) was done with three different mass flow rates. The designed and simulated centrifugal compressor meets the designed pressure rise requirement. The variation of mass flow rate on performance of centrifugal compressor was tend to be similar to conventional centrifugal compressor. The paper discusses about the effect of variation in density, specific heat ratio and pressure of SCO2 with different mass flow outlet condition. The performance map of numerical study were validated with experiment results and found in good agreement with experimental results. The change in flow properties within the rotor flow passage are found to be interesting and very informative for future such centrifugal compressor design for special application of SCO2 Brayton cycle. 80% mass flow rate has given better results in terms of aerodynamic performance. Abrupt change in thermodynamic properties was observed near impeller inlet region. Strong density variations are observed at compressor inlet.


Author(s):  
Rayapati Subbarao ◽  
M. Govardhan

Abstract In a Counter Rotating Turbine (CRT), the stationary nozzle is trailed by two rotors that rotate in the opposite direction to each other. Flow in a CRT stage is multifaceted and more three dimensional, especially, in the gap between nozzle and rotor 1 as well as rotor 1 and rotor 2. By varying this gap between the blade rows, the flow and wake pattern can be changed favorably and may lead to improved performance. Present work analyzes the aspect of change in flow field through the interface, especially the wake pattern and deviation in flow with change in spacing. The components of turbine stage are modeled for different gaps between the components using ANSYS® ICEM CFD 14.0. Normalized flow rates ranging from 0.091 to 0.137 are used. The 15, 30, 50 and 70% of the average axial chords are taken as axial gaps in the present analysis. CFX 14.0 is used for simulation. At nozzle inlet, stagnation pressure boundary condition is used. At the turbine stage or rotor 2 outlet, mass flow rate is specified. Pressure distribution contours at the outlets of the blade rows describe the flow pattern clearly in the interface region. Wake strength at nozzle outlet is more for the lowest gap. At rotor 1 outlet, it is less for x/a = 0.3 and increases with gap. Incidence angles at the inlets of rotors are less for the smaller gaps. Deviation angle at the outlet of rotor 1 is also considered, as rotor 1-rotor 2 interaction is more significant in CRT. Deviation angle at rotor 1 outlet is minimum for this gap. Also, for the intermediate mass flow rate of 0.108, x/a = 0.3 is giving more stage performance. This suggests that at certain axial gap, there is better wake convection and flow outline, when compared to other gap cases. Further, it is identified that for the axial gap of x/a = 0.3 and the mean mass flow rate of 0.108, the performance of CRT is maximum. It is clear that the flow pattern at the interface is changing the incidence and deviation with change in axial gap and flow rate. This study is useful for the gas turbine community to identify the flow rates and gaps at which any CRT stage would perform better.


Author(s):  
Pau Cutrina Vilalta ◽  
Hui Wan ◽  
Soumya S. Patnaik

Abstract In this paper, we use various regression models and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) to predict the centrifugal compressor performance map. Particularly, we study the accuracy and efficiency of Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) and Artificial Neural Networks in modelling the pressure ratio, given the mass flow rate and rotational speed of a centrifugal compressor. Preliminary results show that both GPR and ANN can predict the compressor performance map well, for both interpolation and extrapolation. We also study the data augmentation and data minimzation effects using the GPR. Due to the inherent pressure ratio data distribution in mass-flow-rate and rotational-speed space, data augmentation in the rotational speed is more effective to improve the ANN performance than the mass flow rate data augmentation.


Author(s):  
Chihiro Myoren ◽  
Yasuo Takahashi ◽  
Manabu Yagi ◽  
Takanori Shibata ◽  
Tadaharu Kishibe

An axial compressor was developed for an industrial gas turbine equipped with a water atomization cooling (WAC) system, which is a kind of inlet fogging technique with overspray. The compressor performance was evaluated using a 40MW-class test facility for the advanced humid air turbine system. A prediction method to estimate the effect of WAC was developed for the design of the compressor. The method was based on a streamline curvature (SLC) method implementing a droplet evaporation model. Four test runs with WAC have been conducted since February 2012. The maximum water mass flow rate was 1.2% of the inlet mass flow rate at the 4th test run, while the design value was 2.0%. The results showed that the WAC decreased the inlet and outlet temperatures compared with the DRY (no fogging) case. These decreases changed the matching point of the gas turbine, and increased the mass flow rate and the pressure ratio by 1.8% and 1.1%, respectively. Since prediction results agreed with the results of the test run qualitatively, the compressor performance improvement by WAC was confirmed both experimentally and analytically. The test run with the design water mass flow rate is going to be conducted in the near future.


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