Charlie Koupper

Compatibility of Characteristic Boundary Conditions with Radial Equilibrium in Turbomachinery Simulations

Setting up outlet boundary conditions in configurations that have a strong rotating motion is a crucial issue for turbomachinery simulations. This is usually done using the so-called radial equilibrium assumption, which is used before the simulation and provides an approximate expression for the pressure profile to impose in the outlet plane. This paper shows that recent methods developed for compressible flows, based on characteristic methods, including the effects of transverse terms, can capture the radial equilibrium naturally without having to impose a precomputed pressure profile. In addition, these methods are also designed to control acoustic reflections on boundaries, and the present work suggests that they could replace classical radial equilibrium assumption approximations when nonreflecting boundary conditions are required at the outlet of a turbomachine simulation, for example, in large eddy simulation. This is demonstrated in two cases: 1) a simple annulus flow with a swirl imposed at the inlet and 2) a transonic turbine vane.

Flowfield and Temperature Profiles Measurements on a Combustor Simulator Dedicated to Hot Streaks Generation

In order to deepen the knowledge of the interaction between modern lean burn combustors and high pressure turbines, a real scale annular three sector combustor simulator has been assembled at University of Florence, with the goal of investigating and characterizing the generated aerothermal field and the hot streaks transport between combustor exit and the high pressure vanes location. To generate hot streaks and simulate lean burn combustors behavior, the rig is equipped with axial swirlers, fed by main air flow that is heated up to 531 K, and liners with effusion cooling holes that are fed by air at ambient temperature. The three sector configuration is used to reproduce the periodicity on the central sector and to allow to perform measurements inside the chamber, through the lateral walls.Ducts of different length have been mounted on the swirlers, preserving the hot mainflow from the interaction with coolant. Such configurations, together with the one without ducts, have been tested, using different measurement techniques, in order to highlight the differences in the resulting flow fields.First of all, isothermal PIV measurements have been performed on the combustion chamber symmetry plane, to highlight the mixing phenomena between the mainflow and cooling flows. Then a detailed investigation of the mean aerothermal field at combustor exit has been carried out, for nominal operating conditions, by means of a five hole pressure probe provided with a thermocouple, installed on an automatic traverse system. With the aim of analyzing the hot streaks transport and the flow field modification towards the vanes location, such measurements have been performed on two different planes: one located in correspondence of the combustor exit and the further one placed downstream, in the virtual location of the vanes leading edges.Therefore, an experimental database, describing the evolution of the flow field in a combustor simulator with typical traits of modern lean burn chambers, for different injector geometries, has been set up.Copyright

Experimental and Numerical Calculation of Turbulent Timescales at the Exit of an Engine Representative Combustor Simulator

To deepen the knowledge of the interaction between modern lean burn combustors and high pressure turbines, a non-reactive real scale annular trisector Combustor Simulator (CS) has been assembled at University of Florence, with the goal of investigating and characterizing the combustor aerothermal field as well as the hot streak transport towards the high pressure vanes. To generate hot streaks and simulate lean burn combustor behaviors, the rig is equipped with axial swirlers fed by a main air flow stream that is heated up to 531 K, while liners with effusion cooling holes are fed by air at ambient temperature. Detailed experimental investigations are then performed with the aim of characterizing the turbulence quantities at the exit of the combustion module, and specifically evaluating an integral scale of turbulence. To do so, an automatic traverse system is mounted at the exit of the CS and equipped to perform Hot Wire Anemometry (HWA) measurements. In this paper, two-point correlations are computed from the time signal of the axial velocity giving access to an evaluation of the turbulence timescales at each measurement point. For assessment of the advanced numerical method that is Large Eddy Simulation (LES), the same methodology is applied to a LES prediction of the CS. Although comparisons seem relevant and easily accessible, both approaches and contexts have fundamental differences: mostly in terms of duration of the signals acquired experimentally and numerically but also with potentially different acquisition frequencies. In the exercise that aims at comparing high-order statistics and diagnostics, the specificity of comparing experimental and numerical results is comprehensively discussed. Attention is given to the importance of the acquisition frequency, intrinsic bias of having a short duration signal and influence of the investigating windows. For an adequate evaluation of the turbulent time scales, it is found that comparing experiments and numerics for high Reynolds number flows inferring small-scale phenomena requires to obey a set of rules, otherwise important errors can be made. If adequately processed, LES and HWA are found to agree well indicating the potential of LES for such problems.Copyright

Turbulence Field Measurements at the Exit of a Combustor Simulator Dedicated to Hot Streaks Generation

In order to deepen the knowledge of the interaction between modern lean burn combustors and high pressure turbines, a real scale annular three sector combustor simulator has been assembled at University of Florence, with the goal of investigating and characterizing the generated flow field. To generate hot streaks and simulate lean burn combustors behavior, the rig is equipped with axial swirlers, fed by main air flow that is heated up to 531 K, and liners with effusion cooling holes that are fed by air at ambient temperature. The three sector configuration is used to reproduce the periodicity on the central sector.Ducts of different lengths have been mounted on the swirlers to reduce the interaction of the mainstream with the coolant. Such configurations have been tested, using different measurement techniques, in order to highlight the differences in the resulting flow fields.The work presented in this paper shows the experimental campaign carried out to investigate the flow turbulence at combustor exit, in isothermal conditions, by means of hot wire anemometry. The goal has been achieved by investigating each test point twice, using an automatic traverse system equipped, in turn, with two split-fiber probes, that allow to measure the velocity components on two planes orthogonal to each other. A method for the time correlation of the signals obtained by the two different tests has been used.In order to analyse the turbulence decay towards the vanes location, such measurements have been performed on two different planes: one located in correspondence of the combustor exit and the further one placed downstream, in the virtual location of the vanes leading edges.Copyright

Large Eddy Simulations of Static and Rotating Ribbed Channels in Adiabatic and Isothermal Conditions

In an attempt to better understand spatially developing rotating cooling flows, the present study focuses on a computational investigation of a straight, rotating rib roughened cooling channel initially numerically studied by Fransen et al. [1]. The configuration consists of a squared channel equipped with 8 rib turbulators placed with an angle of 90 degrees with respect to the flow direction. The rib pitch-to-height (p/h) ratio is 10 and the height-to-hydraulic diameter (h/Dh) ratio is 0.1. The simulations are based on a case where time resolved two-dimensional Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) measurements have been performed at the Von Karman Institute (VKI) in a near gas turbine operating condition: the Reynolds number (Re) and the rotation number (Ro) are around 15000 and ± 0.38 respectively. Adiabatic as well as anisothermal conditions have been investigated to evaluate the impact of the wall temperature on the flow, especially in the rotating configurations. Static as well as both positive and negative rotating channels are compared with experimental data. In each case, either an adiabatic or an isothermal wall boundary condition can be computed. In this work, Large Eddy Simulation (LES) results show that the high fidelity CFD model manages very well the turbulence increase (decrease) around the rib in destabilizing (stabilizing) rotation of the ribbed channels. Thanks to the full spatial and temporal description produced by LES, the spatial development of secondary flows are found to be at the origine of observed differences with experimental measurements. Finally, the model is also able to reproduce the differences induced by buoyancy on the flow topology in the near rib region and resulting from an anisothermal flow in rotation.Copyright

Development of an Engine Representative Combustor Simulator Dedicated to Hot Streak Generation

Nowadays, the lack of confidence in the prediction of combustor-turbine interactions and more specifically our ability to predict the migration of hot spots through this interface leads to the application of extra safety margins, which are detrimental to an optimized turbine design and efficiency. To understand the physics and flow at this interface, a full 360° non-reactive combustor simulator representative of a recent lean burn chamber together with a 1.5 turbine stage is instrumented at DLR in Gottingen (Germany) within the European project FACTOR. The chamber operates with axial swirlers especially designed to reproduce engine-realistic velocity and temperature distortion profiles allowing the investigation of the hot streaks transport through the high pressure stage. First, a true scale three injector annular sector of the combustor simulator without turbine is assembled and tested at the University of Florence. To generate the hot steaks the swirlers are fed by an air flow at 531 K, while the liners are cooled by an effusion system fed with air at ambient temperature. In addition to static pressure taps and thermocouples, the test rig will be equipped with an automatic traverse system which allows detailed measurements at the combustor exit by means of a 5-hole probe, a thermocouple and hot wire anemometers. This paper presents the design process and instrumentation of the trisector combustor simulator, with a special focus on Large Eddy Simulations (LES) which were widely used to validate the design choices. It was indeed decided to take advantage of the ability and maturity of LES to properly capture turbulence and mixing within combustion chambers, despite an increased computational cost as compared to usual RANS approaches. For preliminary design, simulations of a single periodic sector (representative of the DLR full annular rig) are compared to simulations of the trisector test rig, showing no difference on the central swirler predictions, comforting the choice for the trisector. In parallel, to allow hot wire anemometry measurements, the selection of an isothermal operating point, representative of the nominal point, is assessed and validated by use of LES.Copyright

Considerations on the Numerical Modelling and Performance of Axial Swirlers Under Relight Conditions

Numerical modelling of aero engine combustors under relight conditions is a matter of continuously increasing importance due to the demanding engine certification regulations. In order to reduce the complexity and the cost of the numerical modelling, common practice is to replace the atomizer’s swirlers with velocity profiles boundary conditions, very often scaled down from nominal operating conditions assuming similarity of the swirler flowfield. The current numerical study focuses on the flowfield characteristics of an axially swirled atomizer operating within a windmilling engine environment. The scalability of the velocity profile from higher power settings is examined. Observations on the performance of the axial swirler under relight conditions are also made.Experimental data was used as a validation platform for the numerical solver, after a grid sensitivity study and a turbulence model selection process. Boundary conditions for simulating the windmilling environment were extracted from experimental work.The swirler axial and tangential velocity profiles were normalised using the swirler inlet velocity. Results showed that both profiles are only scalable for windmilling conditions of high flight Mach number (≥ 0.5). At low flight Mach numbers, the actual profile had a lower velocity than that predicted through scaling. The swirl number was found to deteriorate significantly with the flight velocity following a linear trend, reducing significantly the expected flame quality. As a consequence the burner is forced to operate at the edge of its stability loop with low certainty regarding its successful relight.Copyright