scholarly journals Experimental Investigation of the Flow Mechanisms and the Performance Change of a Highly Loaded Axial Compressor Stage with/without Stator Hub Clearance

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (23) ◽  
pp. 5134
Author(s):  
Baojie Liu ◽  
Ying Qiu ◽  
Guangfeng An ◽  
Xianjun Yu

Three-dimensional corner separation is common in axial compressors, which can lead to large flow loss and blockage especially when it evolves into the corner stall (open separation). In this paper, the evolution of the three-dimensional flow structures inside a cantilevered stator of a 1.5 stage low-speed highly loaded axial compressor as the stator hub clearance varies, and its effect on the whole compressor performance are investigated experimentally. Firstly, when the stator hub is sealed, the hub corner stall will occur at small mass flow rate conditions. Then, when a very small stator hub clearance is introduced, the leakage flow tends to strengthen the hub corner separation at large mass flow rate conditions and prompts the occurrence of hub corner stall as the mass flow rate decreases. This is mainly caused by the fact that the leakage flow has relatively low energy due to the viscosity effect in the clearance and large flow loss generation as the clearance flow comes across and mixes with the transverse secondary flow. Finally, when the stator hub clearance increases, the effect of the flow viscosity becomes very weak and could be ignored, so the enhanced leakage flow can suppress the transverse migration of the low energy flow near the hub, and the hub corner separation at large mass flow rate conditions could be weakened and the hub corner stall at small mass flow rate conditions could be removed or delayed. As the stator hub clearance varies, the flow structures inside the stator passage could be summarized into five typical flow structures, and this is closely associated with the performance of the compressor.

Author(s):  
Yang Chen ◽  
Jun Li ◽  
Chaoyang Tian ◽  
Gangyun Zhong ◽  
Xiaoping Fan ◽  
...  

The aerodynamic performance of three-stage turbine with different types of leakage flows was experimentally and numerically studied in this paper. The leakage flows of three-stage turbine included the shroud seal leakage flow between the rotor blade tip and case, the diaphragm seal leakage flow between the stator blade diaphragm and shaft, as well as the shaft packing leakage flow and the gap leakage flow between the rotor blade curved fir-tree root and wheel disk. The total aerodynamic performance of three-stage turbine including leakage flows was firstly experimentally measured. The detailed flow field and aerodynamic performance were also numerically investigated using three-dimensional Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) and S-A turbulence model. The numerical mass flow rate and efficiency showed well agreement with experimental data. The effects of leakage flows between the fir-tree root and the wheel disk were studied. All leakage mass flow fractions, including the mass flow rate in each hole for all sets of root gaps were given for comparison. The effect of leakage flow on the aerodynamic performance of three-stage was illustrated and discussed.


2014 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 307-313 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Taghavi-Zenou ◽  
S. Abbasi ◽  
S. Eslami

ABSTRACTThis paper deals with tip leakage flow structure in subsonic axial compressor rotor blades row under different operating conditions. Analyses are based on flow simulation utilizing computational fluid dynamic technique. Three different circumstances at near stall condition are considered in this respect. Tip leakage flow frequency spectrum was studied through surveying instantaneous static pressure signals imposed on blades surfaces. Results at the highest flow rate, close to the stall condition, showed that the tip vortex flow fluctuates with a frequency close to the blade passing frequency. In addition, pressure signals remained unchanged with time. Moreover, equal pressure fluctuations at different passages guaranteed no peripheral disturbances. Tip leakage flow frequency decreased with reduction of the mass flow rate and its structure was changing with time. Spillage of the tip leakage flow from the blade leading edge occurred without any backflow in the trailing edge region. Consequently, various flow structures were observed within every passage between two adjacent blades. Further decrease in the mass flow rate provided conditions where the spilled flow ahead of the blade leading edge together with trailing edge backflow caused spike stall to occur. This latter phenomenon was accompanied by lower frequencies and higher amplitudes of the pressure signals. Further revolution of the rotor blade row caused the spike stall to eventuate to larger stall cells, which may be led to fully developed rotating stall.


Author(s):  
Mengying Shu ◽  
Mingyang Yang ◽  
Ricardo F. Martinez-Botas ◽  
Kangyao Deng ◽  
Lei Shi

The flow in intake manifolds of internal combustion engine becomes more unsteady because of engine downsizing which is achieved by reducing cylinder number and increasing the boosting. Turbocharger compressor is thus exposed to the enhanced pulsating backpressure. This paper studies responses of a centrifugal compressor to the pulsating backpressure via experimentally validated numerical method. Firstly, CFD model with the volute and all impeller passages is established and validated by experimental measurements. Then the unsteady three-dimensional simulation is conducted on a single passage imposed by the pulsating backpressure conditions which are obtained by 1-D unsteady simulation. Results show that the performance of the passage evidently deviates from steady performance. Hysteresis loops of the performance appear at pulsating backpressure conditions, which encapsulate the performance at steady conditions. Moreover, the unsteadiness of the impeller performance is enhanced as the mass flow rate reduces. The performance and flow structures of the impeller near stall for the pulsating case are more favorable than that at corresponding constant backpressure. Furthermore, flow structures at points with the same instant mass flow rate are also notably different when they are located at different strokes of the pulse. The flow in the impeller is determined by not only the instant boundary condition but also the evolution history of flow field. The dynamic stall which is analogue to the phenomenon on pitching airfoil happens in the compressor and delays the instability of the device when it is exposed to pulsating backpressure. This study provides useful insights in the influence of pulsating backpressure on compressor performance in actual engine situations, from which better turbo-engine matching might be benefited.


Author(s):  
Magdy S. Attia ◽  
Christopher Hemerly

In an article published some time ago [1], the authors investigated the idea of breaking down the [multi-stage] compressor component of the typical turbofan engine into modules. The motivation for this work stems from a “Lean Engineering” approach to gas turbine engine design. Five (5) modules were created; they are the inlet, front, core, rear, and exit modules. The intent is to maximize the size of the core module, as represented by the number of stages. Thus, many different compressors can share the core module, which will greatly reduce the Lifecycle costs for the fleet. The next stage of this work focuses on the Meanline and Throughflow design and analysis of two different compressors that share an 8-stage core. The first compressor, HPC-1, is a 10-stage compressor operating at 9,000 rpm, having 100 Kg/sec inlet mass flow rate, and a 13.5:1 overall pressure ratio. HPC-2 is a 13-stage modular upgrade of HPC-1, operating at 9,700 rpm, having an inlet mass flow rate of 140 Kg/sec, and a 27:1 overall pressure ratio. Applying the modular concept, the first and last stages (of HPC-1) have been removed and replaced by 2 and 3 stages, respectively. Additionally the inlet and exit modules have been redesigned as well. Preliminary Meanline analysis showed that this concept could present challenging boundary conditions for the design of the interface stage; the name assigned to the first stage of the core module. The conditions entering that stage represent a critical hurdle to the viability of this method. Slight variations in corrected speed and pressure ratios for stages 1 and 2 of the modular upgrade, HPC-2, provided the necessary realignment of the core module. The pressure ratio of the core module differs by less than 1% for both compressors. And in both instances, the corrected speed is virtually identical. Throughflow analysis, conducted using T-AXI [2], confirms the redesign and the viability of the method.


Author(s):  
Jinlan Gou ◽  
Wei Wang ◽  
Can Ma ◽  
Yong Li ◽  
Yuansheng Lin ◽  
...  

Using supercritical carbon dioxide (SCO2) as the working fluid of a closed Brayton cycle gas turbine is widely recognized nowadays, because of its compact layout and high efficiency for modest turbine inlet temperature. It is an attractive option for geothermal, nuclear and solar energy conversion. Compressor is one of the key components for the supercritical carbon dioxide Brayton cycle. With established or developing small power supercritical carbon dioxide test loop, centrifugal compressor with small mass flow rate is mainly investigated and manufactured in the literature; however, nuclear energy conversion contains more power, and axial compressor is preferred to provide SCO2 compression with larger mass flow rate which is less studied in the literature. The performance of the axial supercritical carbon dioxide compressor is investigated in the current work. An axial supercritical carbon dioxide compressor with mass flow rate of 1000kg/s is designed. The thermodynamic region of the carbon dioxide is slightly above the vapor-liquid critical point with inlet total temperature 310K and total pressure 9MPa. Numerical simulation is then conducted to assess this axial compressor with look-up table adopted to handle the nonlinear variation property of supercritical carbon dioxide near the critical point. The results show that the performance of the design point of the designed axial compressor matches the primary target. Small corner separation occurs near the hub, and the flow motion of the tip leakage fluid is similar with the well-studied air compressor. Violent property variation near the critical point creates troubles for convergence near the stall condition, and the stall mechanism predictions are more difficult for the axial supercritical carbon dioxide compressor.


2010 ◽  
Vol 132 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yoon Jo Kim ◽  
Yogendra K. Joshi ◽  
Andrei G. Fedorov ◽  
Young-Joon Lee ◽  
Sung-Kyu Lim

It is now widely recognized that the three-dimensional (3D) system integration is a key enabling technology to achieve the performance needs of future microprocessor integrated circuits (ICs). To provide modular thermal management in 3D-stacked ICs, the interlayer microfluidic cooling scheme is adopted and analyzed in this study focusing on a single cooling layer performance. The effects of cooling mode (single-phase versus phase-change) and stack/layer geometry on thermal management performance are quantitatively analyzed, and implications on the through-silicon-via scaling and electrical interconnect congestion are discussed. Also, the thermal and hydraulic performance of several two-phase refrigerants is discussed in comparison with single-phase cooling. The results show that the large internal pressure and the pumping pressure drop are significant limiting factors, along with significant mass flow rate maldistribution due to the presence of hot-spots. Nevertheless, two-phase cooling using R123 and R245ca refrigerants yields superior performance to single-phase cooling for the hot-spot fluxes approaching ∼300 W/cm2. In general, a hybrid cooling scheme with a dedicated approach to the hot-spot thermal management should greatly improve the two-phase cooling system performance and reliability by enabling a cooling-load-matched thermal design and by suppressing the mass flow rate maldistribution within the cooling layer.


Author(s):  
Brian M. T. Tang ◽  
Marko Bacic ◽  
Peter T. Ireland

This paper presents a computational investigation into the impact of cooling air injected through the stationary over-tip turbine casing on overall turbine efficiency. The high work axial flow turbine is representative of the high pressure turbine of a civil aviation turbofan engine. The effect of active modulation of the cooling air is assessed, as well as that of the injection locations. The influence of the through-casing coolant injection on the turbine blade over-tip leakage flow and the associated secondary flow features are examined. Transient (unsteady) sliding mesh simulations of a one turbine stage rotor-stator domain are performed using periodic boundary conditions. Cooling air configurations with a constant total pressure air supply, constant mass flow rate and actively controlled total pressure supply are assessed for a single geometric arrangement of cooling holes. The effects of both the mass flow rate of cooling air and the location of its injection relative to the turbine rotor blade are examined. The results show that all of the assessed cooling configurations provided a benefit to turbine row efficiency of between 0.2 and 0.4 percentage points. The passive and constant mass flow rate configurations reduced the over-tip leakage flow, but did so in an inefficient manner, with decreasing efficiency observed with increasing injection mass flow rate beyond 0.6% of the mainstream flow, despite the over-tip leakage mass flow rate continuing to reduce. By contrast, the active total pressure controlled injection provided a more efficient manner of controlling this leakage flow, as it permitted a redistribution of cooling air, allowing it to be applied in the regions close to the suction side of the blade tip which more directly reduced over-tip leakage flow rates and hence improved efficiency. Cooling air injected close to the pressure side of the rotor blade was less effective at controlling the leakage flow, and was associated with increased aerodynamic loss in the passage vortex.


Author(s):  
Byeung Jun Lim ◽  
Tae Choon Park ◽  
Young Seok Kang

In this study, characteristics of stall inception in a single-stage transonic axial compressor with circumferential grooves casing treatment were investigated experimentally. Additionally, the characteristic of increasing irregularity in the pressure inside circumferential grooves as the compressor approaches the stall limit was applied to the stall warning method. Spike-type rotating stall was observed in the single-stage transonic axial compressor with smooth casing. When circumferential grooves were applied, the stall inception was suppressed and the operating point of the compressor moved to lower flow rate than the stall limit. A spike-like disturbance was developed into a rotating stall cell and then the Helmholtz perturbation was overlapped on it at N = 80%. At N = 70 %, the Helmholtz perturbation was observed first and the amplitude of the wave gradually increased as mass flow rate decreased. At N = 60%, spike type stall inceptions were observed intermittently and then developed into continuous rotating stall at lower mass flow rate. Pressure measured at the bottom of circumferential grooves showed that the level of irregularity of pressure increased as flow rate decreased. Based on the characteristic of increasing irregularity of the pressure signals inside the circumferential grooves as stall approaches, an autocorrelation technique was applied to the stall warning. This technique could be used to provide warning against stall and estimate real-time stall margins in compressors with casing treatments.


Author(s):  
E. de la Rosa Blanco ◽  
H. P. Hodson ◽  
R. Vazquez

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.


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