Aerothermal simulation of the effect of hot-streak and residual swirl on a high pressure turbine stage

Mansouri, Zakaria; Jefferson-Loveday, Richard

Abstract

In new generation aero-engines, lean-burn combustors are equipped with swirl injectors in order to reduce pollutant emissions. At the exit of these combustors, the flow is dominated by temperature non-uniformity (hot-streak) and residual swirl. Available research has focused mainly on the isolated effects of the residual swirl only or the hot-streak only on the aerodynamic performance or thermal performance of the high-pressure turbine (HPT). Only few studies investigated the combined swirl and hot-streak on the aerothermal performance of the HPT using either idealized uniform or rounded hot-streak topologies. The present study investigates the effects of residual swirl and distorted hot-streak simultaneously on a first stage of a HPT. Other hot-streak types, uniform and rounded, have been also investigated with and without swirl to perform comparisons with the distorted hot-streak. Unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (URANS) computations have been conducted to assess the aerothermal performance of a HPT under the influence of different hot-streaks. Results revealed that all hot-streaks without swirl were almost preserved as transported through the vane and altered as transported through the rotor due to the secondary flows. Under the residual swirl, all hot-streaks were remarkably altered at the vane exit and deformed more at the rotor exit. The uniform hot-streak was homogenised through the rotor and the rounded and distorted hot-streaks were dispersed. The distorted hot-streak showed the most complex transport behaviour through the stage. Results also revealed that the leakage flow through the rotor tip gap generated high heat transfer rates, in particular on the rotor blade suction side and tip surface.

Citation

Mansouri, Z., & Jefferson-Loveday, R. (2022). Aerothermal simulation of the effect of hot-streak and residual swirl on a high pressure turbine stage. In Proceedings of the 17th UK Heat Transfer Conference

• Conference Name: 17th UK Heat Transfer Conference (UKHTC2021)
• Conference Location: Manchester, UK (online)
• Start Date: Apr 4, 2022
• End Date: Apr 6, 2022
• Acceptance Date: Jan 14, 2022
• Online Publication Date: Apr 6, 2022
• Publication Date: Apr 6, 2022
• Deposit Date: Jun 29, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 29, 2022
• Series Title: UK Heat Transfer Conference (UKHTC)
• Book Title: Proceedings of the 17th UK Heat Transfer Conference
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/8766269
• Related Public URLs: https://www.ukhtc2021.org/; ; http://cfd.mace.manchester.ac.uk/ukhtc21-proc/