International Journal of Turbomachinery, Propulsion and Power

This paper presents a numerical analysis of the influence of the von Karman vortex shedding at the blade trailing edge on the hydrodynamics of a recently installed small hydro Francis turbine manifesting very loud and high-frequency acoustic pulsations when operating close to the nominal load. A reduced single-passage numerical model is developed to reduce the computational effort of the simulation while ensuring high accuracy in the assessment of fluid flow. The accuracy of the proposed numerical approach is investigated by comparing the frequency spectrum of the experimentally acquired acoustic frequency and the numerical pressure signals, confirming the nature of the machine’s vibrations. The validated numerical model represents a useful tool for an in-depth analysis of the machine’s hydrodynamics in the preliminary design phases. The proposed approach represents a valid alternative to the traditional correlation-based approach for the evaluation of the von Karman shedding frequency with less computational effort compared with a transient simulation of the entire machine. Full article

Double-regulated Kaplan turbines with adjustable guide vanes and runner blades offer a high degree of flexibility and good efficiency for a wide range of operating points. However, this also leads to a complex geometry and flow guidance with, for example, vortices of different sizes and strengths. The flow in a draft tube is especially challenging to simulate mainly due to flow phenomena, like swirl, separation and strong adverse pressure gradients, and a strong dependency on the upstream flow conditions. Standard simulation approaches with RANS turbulence models, a coarse mesh and large time step size often fail to correctly predict performance and can even lead to wrong tendencies in the overall behavior. To reveal occurring flow phenomena and physical effects, a scale-resolving hybrid RANS-LES simulation on a block structured mesh of about 400 million hexahedral elements of a double-regulated five-blade model Kaplan turbine is carried out. In this paper, first, the results of the ongoing simulation are presented. The major part of the simulation domain is running in LES mode and seems to be properly resolved. The validation of the simulation results with the experimental data shows mean deviations of less than 0.8% in the global results, i.e., total head and power, and a good visual agreement with the three-dimensional PIV measurements of the velocity in the cone and both diffuser channels of the draft tube. In particular, the trend of total head and the results for the draft tube differ significantly between the scale-resolving simulation and a standard RANS simulation. The standard RANS simulation exhibits a highly unsteady behavior of flow, which is not observed in the experiments or scale-resolving simulation. Full article

In the current study, full-stage unsteady simulations were performed to investigate rotating instability inception mechanisms in a particularly large tip clearance centrifugal compressor with a vaneless diffuser and a volute. Four operating points along a speed line were analysed to understand the influence of the mass flow reduction on flow structures. Close to the peak efficiency, an unsteady interaction between the tip clearance vortices and splitter blades was observed. Considering other studies, the influence of the tip gap size was analysed. Then, a large-scale vortex shedding from the leading edges of the main blades was detected when the stage operated near the maximum pressure ratio. It was demonstrated that shed vortices were caused by the combination of the radial gradient of the tangential velocity under the tip vortex and the reverse backflow near the casing. Previous studies on axial compressors refer to these vortical structures as backflow vortices. These vortices cause a significant increase in the incidence angle in the tip region. Full article

Due to the increasingly high turbine inlet temperatures, heat transfer analysis is now, more than ever, a vital part of the design and optimization of high-pressure turbine rotor blades of a modern jet engine. The present study aimed to find out how shape deviation and in-service deterioration affect heat exchange patterns on the rotor blade. The rotor geometries used for this analysis are represented by a set of high-resolution 3D structured light scans of blades with the same number of in-service hours. An automatic meshing technique was employed to generate high-resolution meshes directly on the scanned rotor geometries, which captured all the surface features with high fidelity. Steady-state 3D RANS flow simulations with a k-ω SST turbulence model were conducted on a one-and-a-half stage computational domain of the scanned geometries. First, the distribution of the heat transfer coefficient was calculated for each blade; then, a correlation was sought between the heat transfer coefficient and parametrized shape deviation, to assess the impact of each parameter on HTC levels. Full article

Off-design condition of a rotor blade cascade with and without platform cooling was experimentally investigated. The ability of the gas turbine to operate down to 50% to 20% of its nominal intake air flow rate has an important consequence in the change in the inlet incidence angle, which varied from nominal to −20°. Platform cooling through an upstream slot simulating the stator-to-rotor interface gap was considered. The impact of rotation on purge flow injection was simulated by installing fins inside the slot to give the coolant flow a tangential direction. Aerodynamic measurements to quantify the cascade aerodynamic loss and secondary flow structures were performed at Ma_2is = 0.55, varying the coolant to main flow mass flow ratio (MFR%) and the incidence angle. The results show that losses strongly increase with MFR. A negative incidence allows a reduction in the overall loss even when coolant is injected with a high MFR. The more negative the incidence, the greater the loss reduction. Full article

The efficiency assessment of a high-pressure turbine (HPT) stage is complicated by the presence of upstream and downstream purge flows. In fact, the efficiency calculation is often based on mass flow-averaged values of total temperature at the stage inlet and outlet planes. Moreover, the purge flow distribution in the annulus is usually unknown and therefore assumed to be uniform. This paper presents and applies an alternative method to calculate the efficiency of a fully purged HPT stage. Such a definition relies on seed gas concentration measurements at the HPT stage outlet plane to determine the outlet purge flow distribution. After comparing the alternative method to the standard definition (based on the assumption of uniform purge) for the nominal purge case, the efficiency variation between the case with nominal purge and the case without purge is investigated. Full article

An experimental investigation of the local flow field in a Wells turbine has been conducted, in order to produce a detailed analysis of the aerodynamic characteristics of the rotor and support the search for optimized solutions. The measurements were conducted with a hot-wire anemometer (HWA) probe, reconstructing the local three-dimensional flow field both upstream and downstream of a small-scale Wells turbine. The multi-rotation technique has been applied to measure the three velocity components of the flow field for a fixed operating condition. The results of the investigation show the local flow structures along a blade pitch, highlighting the location and radial extension of the vortices which interact with the clean flow, thus degrading the turbine’s overall performance. Some peculiarities of this turbine have also been shown, and need to be considered in order to propose modified solutions to improve its performance. Full article

The purpose of the paper is to characterize the aerodynamic behavior of a rotor-downstream hub cavity rim seal in a high-pressure turbine (HPT) stage. The experimental data are acquired in the Transonic Test Turbine Facility at the Graz University of Technology: the test setup includes two engine-representative turbine stages (the last HPT stage and first LPT stage), with the intermediate turbine duct in between. All stator-rotor cavities are supplied with purge flows by a secondary air system, which simulates the bleeding air from the compressor stages of the real engine. The HPT downstream hub cavity is provided with wall taps and pitot tubes at different radial and circumferential locations, which allows the performance of steady pressure and seed gas concentration measurements for different purge mass flows and HPT vanes clocking positions. Moreover, miniaturized pressure transducers are adopted to evaluate the unsteady pressure distribution, and an oil flow visualization is performed to retrieve additional information on the wheel space structures. The annulus pressure asymmetry depends on the HPT vane clocking, but this is shown to have negligible impact on the minimum purge mass flow required to seal the cavity. However, the hub pressure profile drives the distribution of the cavity egress in the turbine channel. The unsteady pressure field is dominated by blade-synchronous oscillations. No non-synchronous components with comparable intensity are detected. Full article

In the coming carbon-neutral era, industrial gas turbines (GT) will continue to play an important role as energy conversion equipment with high thermal efficiency and as stabilizers of the electric power grid. Because of the transition to a clean fuel, such as hydrogen or ammonia, the main modifications will lie with the combustor. It can be expected that small and medium-sized gas turbines will burn fewer inferior fuels, and the scope of cogeneration activities they are used for will be expanded. Industrial gas turbine cycles including CCGT appropriate for the carbon-neutral era are surveyed from the viewpoint of thermodynamics. The use of clean fuels and carbon capture and storage (CCS) will inevitably increase the unit cost of power generation. Therefore, the first objective is to present thermodynamic cycles that fulfil these requirements, as well as their verification tests. One conclusion is that it is necessary to realize the oxy-fuel cycle as a method to utilize carbon-heavy fuels and biomass and not generate NO_x from hydrogen combustion at high temperatures. The second objective of the authors is to show the required morphology of the cooling structures in airfoils, which enable industrial gas turbines with a higher efficiency. In order to achieve this, a survey of the historical development of the existing cooling methods is presented first. CastCool^® and wafer and diffusion bonding blades are discussed as turbine cooling technologies applicable to future GTs. Based on these, new designs already under development are shown. Most of the impetus comes from the development of aviation airfoils, which can be more readily applied to industrial gas turbines because the operation will become more similar. Double-wall cooling (DWC) blades can be considered for these future industrial gas turbines. It will be possible in the near future to fabricate the DWC structures desired by turbine cooling designers using additive manufacturing (AM). Another conclusion is that additively manufactured DWC is the best cooling technique for these future gas turbines. However, at present, research in this field and the data generated are scattered, and it is not yet possible for heat transfer designers to fabricate cooling structures with the desired accuracy. Full article

Especially in the field of sewage pumps, the design of radial impellers focuses not only on maximum efficiency but also on functionality in terms of susceptibility to clogging by fibrous media. In general, the efficiency of sewage impellers is significantly lower than that of clear water impellers. These sewage impellers are designed with a low number of blades to ensure that fibrous media can be pumped. This paper describes the methodology of an optimisation for a sewage impeller. The optimisation is carried out on a semi-open two-channel impeller as an example. Therefore, a new impeller is designed for a given volute casing. Based on a basic design for given boundary conditions, the impeller is verified by means of numerical simulation. The manufactured impeller is then tested on the test rig to verify the simulation. With regard to the optical investigations, the clogging behaviour of the impeller is specifically improved over three different modifications in order to finally present an impeller with good efficiency and a low clogging tendency. Full article

Cavitation instabilities can induce axial and circumferential vibrations, as well as noise in turbopump inducers. Therefore, the purpose of the present study is to investigate the mechanism of cavitation instability. The flow field near the two-bladed inducer leading edge under alternate blade cavitation was experimentally investigated using particle image velocimetry (PIV). It was found that the tip leakage vortex cavitation draws the flow toward its region of collapse and induces a negative change in the incidence to the adjacent blade. Moreover, this blade-to-blade interaction was identified as the main cause of alternate blade cavitation. Furthermore, it was demonstrated that this blade-to-blade interaction is strongest when the cavity collapse occurs in the inducer throat area, where the leading edge of the following blade is located. Full article

Gas–liquid mixtures are present in numerous industrial applications, such as in the process industry, oil production and transport with natural gas, deep-sea extraction, and irrigation. Any pump may have to carry multiphase flows. However, the present document is related to non-miscible liquid/gas flow transport analysis in centrifugal pumps because which topic can be a more challenging task compared with axial and mixed flow machines due to specific body force and buoyancy actions and large density differences between the phases. The present document first introduces the main usual gas–liquid two-phase definitions and simplifications. A dimensional analysis introduces the main flow variables and parameters that are used for pumps. Basic physical aspects of flow motion in an impeller channel are explained, and a rapid description of two-phase flow patterns in radial flow pumps is described. Finally, a review of simplified empirical and semi-empirical analytical models is proposed with their limitations. Full article

Predicting pump performance and ensuring operational reliability under two-phase conditions is a major goal of three-dimensional (3D) computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis of liquid/gas radial centrifugal pump flows. Hence, 3D CFD methods are increasingly applied to such flows in academia and industry. The CFD analysis of liquid/gas pump flows demands careful selection of sub-models from several fields in CFD, such as two-phase and turbulence modeling, as well as high-quality meshing of complex geometries. This paper presents an overview of current CFD simulation strategies, and recent progress in two-phase modeling is outlined. Particular focus is given to different approaches for dispersed bubbly flow and coherent gas accumulations. For dispersed bubbly flow regions, Euler–Euler Two-Fluid models are discussed, including population balance and bubble interaction models. For coherent gas pocket flow, essentially interface-capturing Volume-of-Fluid methods are applied. A hybrid model is suggested, i.e., a combination of an Euler–Euler Two-Fluid model with interface-capturing properties, predicting bubbly flow regimes as well as regimes with coherent gas pockets. The importance of considering scale-resolving turbulence models for highly-unsteady two-phase flow regions is emphasized. Full article

The current requirements of industrialized countries require the use of as much renewable energy as possible. One significant problem with renewable energy is that the produced power fluctuates. Currently, the only method available for energy compensation in the shortest time is given by hydroelectric power plants. Instead, hydroelectric power plants (especially the plants equipped with hydraulic turbines with fixed blades) are designed to operate in the vicinity of the optimal operating point with a maximum ±10% deviation. The energy market requires that hydraulic turbines operate in an increasingly wide area between −35% to 20% from the optimum operating point. Operation of hydraulic turbines far from the optimum operating point involves the appearance downstream of the turbine of a decelerated swirling flow with hydraulic instabilities (known in the literature as the vortex rope). The main purpose of this paper is to investigate numerically a new concept by using a free runner downstream on the main hydraulic runner turbine more precisely in the draft tube cone. The free runner concept requires rotations at the runaway speed with vanishing mechanical torque. The main purpose is to redistribute the total pressure and the moment between the shaft and the periphery. In addition, the free runner does not modify the operating point of the main hydraulic turbine runner. Full article

In applications, the acoustics of fans can differ significantly from the measurements of the standalone fan. This is due to disturbed inflow conditions, for example, caused by a heat exchanger upstream of an axial fan. Resolving the complex geometry and dimensions of typical heat exchangers in aeroacoustic scale-resolving simulations leads to a very high computation effort, which is currently not economically feasible. Turbulence reconstruction tools, such as the FRPM, provide the possibility to model the turbulent inflow conditions, thereby avoiding the representation of the heat exchanger in the aeroacoustic simulations. This approach is tested on a benchmark experiment of a ducted fan with an upstream turbulence grid. Full article

In many air conditioning applications fan arrays offer an increasingly popular alternative to single large fans due to redundancy and ease of maintainability. Additionally, there is the possibility to dynamically resize the array by selectively turning off a number of fans. In this work, a new method for the optimal control of such fan arrays is derived with the goal to minimize the overall power consumption, i.e., maximizing the system efficiency. The approach is universal in the sense that a fan array can be composed of any number, size, and type of fans or mixtures thereof. We explore the achievable power savings for a real world example by applying the method. Moreover, we give an outline of the optimal design of fan arrays and future work. Full article

The rising number of applications of the organic Rankine cycle (ORC) or supercritical CO₂ (sCO₂) power systems have shaped a new branch of fluid mechanics called non-ideal compressible fluid dynamics (NICFD). This field of fluid mechanics is concerned with flows of vapors or gases, which are characterized by substantial deviations from the perfect gas model. In extreme cases, even non-classical gas dynamic phenomena could occur. Although these non-ideal compressible flows are the subject of sophisticated numerical simulation studies today, there is also a growing need for experimental data for validating purposes. In the last couple of years, new experimental test rigs designed for investigating non-ideal compressible fluid dynamics have been developed and commissioned. Classical practical measurement techniques are currently being re-developed and applied to non-ideal compressible flows. Despite its substantial relevance, information about these measurement techniques and their differences from conventional methods in the open literature is scarce. The present review article is an attempt to reduce that gap. After briefly discussing the thermodynamics and fluid dynamics of non-ideal compressible flows, the currently available test rigs and their utilized measurement techniques are reviewed. This review discusses schlieren optical investigations, pneumatic and laser-optical methods, and hot-wire anemometry for non-ideal compressible flows. Full article

The complex flow conditions in Pelton turbines make it challenging to gain detailed insight into the local flow processes. However, CFD methods offer vast potential for developing and optimising Pelton turbines due to these flow conditions. In a comprehensive examination, a six-nozzle prototype Pelton turbine with 19 buckets has been investigated using 3D CFD simulations. First, the steady simulations of the manifold and the unsteady runner simulation have been performed with a mesh-based, commercial CFD code, whereby a two-equation turbulence model and the homogeneous two-phase model were used. Then, to limit the simulation time, symmetry was applied in the runner simulation, and also a strategic definition of the mesh element size in selected blocks of higher interest. Subsequently, the simulation results were analysed. Based on the first simulation results, the geometry of the distributor was modified in an iterative process to reduce losses and improve the jet shape. For the improvement of the latter, a characteristic number was introduced to quantify the secondary flows upstream of the nozzles, which act negatively on the jet shape. Furthermore, the results of the runner simulation were analysed with special regard to the jet-bucket interaction from the start to the end of the impingement cycle of a particular bucket. Finally, a potential efficiency increase could be derived from the summary. Full article

Air-cooled condensers (ACCs) are commonly found in power plants working with concentrated solar power or in steam power plants operated in regions with limited water availability. In ACCs, the flow of air is driven toward the heat exchangers by axial fans that are characterized by large diameters and operate at very high mass flow rates with a near-zero static pressure rise. Given the overall requirements in steam plants, these fans are subjected to inflow distortions, unstable operations, and are characterized by high noise emissions. Previous studies show that leading edge bumps in the tip region of axial fans can effectively reduce the sound pressure levels without affecting the static efficiency. Nevertheless, the effects of this treatment in terms of flow patterns and heat exchange in the whole ACC system were not investigated. In this work, the effect of leading edge bumps on the flow patterns is analyzed. Two RANS simulations were carried out using OpenFOAM on a simplified model of the air-cooled condenser. The fans are simulated using a frozen rotor approach. Turbulence modeling relies on the RNG k-epsilon model. The fan is characterized by a diameter of 7.3 m and a 333 m³/s volumetric flow rate at the design point. The presence of the heat exchanger is modeled using a porous medium. The comparison between the flow fields clearly exerts that the modified blade is responsible for the redistribution of radial velocities in the rotor region. This drastically reduces the losses related to the installation of the fan in a real configuration. Full article