Cosimo Bianchini

Numerical Benchmark of Nonconventional RANS Turbulence Models for Film and Effusion Cooling

Over the course of the years, several turbulence models specifically developed to improve the predicting capabilities of conventional two-equations Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) models have been proposed. They have, however, been mainly tested against experiments only comparing with standard isotropic models, in single hole configuration and for very low blowing ratio. A systematic benchmark of the various nonconventional models exploring a wider range of application is hence missing. This paper performs a comparison of three recently proposed models over three different test cases of increasing computational complexity. The chosen test matrix covers a wide range of blowing ratios (0.5–3.0) including both single row and multi-row cases for which experimental data of reference are available. In particular the well-known test by Sinha et al. (1991, “Film-Cooling Effectiveness Downstream of a Single Row of Holes with Variable Density Ratio,” J. Turbomach., 113, pp. 442–449) at BR = 0.5 is used in conjunction with two in-house carried out experiments: a single row film-cooling test at BR = 1.5 and a 15 rows test plate designed to study the interaction between slot and effusion cooling at BR = 3.0. The first two considered models are based on a tensorial definition of the eddy viscosity in which the stream-span position is augmented to overcome the main drawback connected with standard isotropic turbulence models that is the lower lateral spreading of the jet downwards the injection. An anisotropic factor to multiply the off diagonal position is indeed calculated from an algebraic expression of the turbulent Reynolds number developed by Bergeles et al. (1978, “The Turbulent Jet in a Cross Stream at Low Injection Rates: A Three-Dimensional Numerical Treatment,” Numer. Heat Transfer, 1, pp. 217–242) from DNS statistics over a flat plate. This correction could be potentially implemented in the framework of any eddy viscosity model. It was chosen to compare the predictions of such modification applied to two among the most common two-equation turbulence models for film-cooling tests, namely the two-layer (TL) model and the k–ω shear stress transport (SST), firstly proposed and tested in the past respectively by Azzi and Lakeal (2002, “Perspectives in Modeling Film Cooling of Turbine Blades by Transcending Conventional Two-Equation Turbulence Models,” J. Turbomach., 124, pp. 472–484) and Cottin et al. (2011, “Modeling of the Heat Flux For Multi-Hole Cooling Applications,” Proceedings of the ASME Turbo Expo, Paper No. GT2011-46330). The third model, proposed by Holloway et al. (2005, “Computational Study of Jet-in-Crossflow and Film Cooling Using a New Unsteady-Based Turbulence Model,” Proceedings of the ASME Turbo Expo, Paper No. GT2005-68155), involves the unsteady solution of the flow and thermal field to include the short-time response of the stress tensor to rapid strain rates. This model takes advantage of the solution of an additional transport equation for the local effective total stress to trace the strain rate history. The results are presented in terms of adiabatic effectiveness distribution over the plate as well as spanwise averaged profiles.

Assessment of Numerical Tools for the Evaluation of the Acoustic Impedance of Multi-Perforated Plates

Multi-perforated liners, commonly employed in Gas Turbine combustors as cooling devices to control metal temperature, are recognized as very effective sound absorbers. Thus, in the innovative lean combustion technology, where the onset of thermoacoustic instabilities represents one of the most important issue, the multi-perforated plates can be exploited both for wall cooling and damping combustion instabilities. As a first step of a large experimental and numerical research program regarding multi-perforated liners, an investigation of different numerical methodologies to analyze acoustic damping is here reported. In particular three different numerical techniques to evaluate planar waves sound absorption of perforated plates are presented and validated with literature test cases. A quasi 1-D code, implementing the wall compliance concept, provides results for a large set of geometric and fluidynamic conditions. A large test matrix was investigated varying perforation hole angle and diameter with different overall porosities. The effect of bias and grazing flows Mach number was tested as well. A subset of considered geometries were then supported by a full reconstruction of the unsteady pressure field by means of a Large Eddy Simulation computed with an open-source code. Non-reflective boundaries with forcing term provide the wave to acoustically excite the perforated plate. Multi-microphone postprocessing technique allowed the reconstruction of a progressive and regressive planar wave to compute the reflection coefficient. All results were cross-checked with a Finite Element Model, able to solve the wave equation in the frequency domain with a background velocity field.Copyright

Numerical and Experimental Investigation of Turning Flow Effects on Innovative Pin Fin Arrangements for Trailing Edge Cooling Configurations

The effect of the array configuration of circular pin fins is investigated from a numerical and experimental point of view reproducing a typical cooling scheme of a real high pressure aero-engine blade. The airstream enters the domain of interest radially from the hub inlet and exits axially from the trailing edge (TE) outlet section. More than 100 turbulators are inserted in the wedge-shaped TE duct to enhance the heat transfer: A reference array implementing seven rows of staggered pins is compared with an innovative pentagonal arrangement. Investigations were made considering real engine flow conditions: Both numerical calculations and experimental measurements were performed fixing Re=18,000 and Ma=0.3 in the TE throat section. The effect of the tip mass flow rate was also taken into account, investigating 0% and 25% of the TE mass flow rate. The experimental activity was aimed at obtaining detailed heat transfer coefficient maps over the internal pressure side (PS) surface by means of the transient technique with thermochromic liquid crystals. Particle image velocimetry measurements were performed and surface flow visualizations were made by means of the oil and dye technique on the PS surface. Steady-state Reynolds averaged Navier–Stokes simulations were performed with two different computational fluid dynamics (CFD) codes: the commercial software Ansys CFX® 11.0 and an in-house solver based on the opensource toolbox OpenFOAM® , to compare the performance and predictive capabilities. Turbulence was modeled by means of the k−ω shear stress transport (SST) model with a hybrid near-wall treatment allowing strong clustering of the wall of interest as well as quite coarse refinement on the other viscous surfaces.

Thermofluid Dynamic Analysis of a Gas Turbine Transition-Piece

The transition-piece of a gas turbine engine is subjected to high thermal loads as it collects high temperature combustion products from the gas generator to a turbine. This generally produces high thermal stress levels in the casing of the transition piece, strongly limiting its life expectations and making it one of the most critical components of the entire engine. The reliable prediction of such thermal loads is hence a crucial aspect to increase the transition-piece life span and to assure safe operations. The present study aims to investigate the aero-thermal behaviour of a gas turbine engine transition-piece and in particular to evaluate working temperatures of the casing in relation to the flow and heat transfer situation inside and outside the transition-piece. Typical operating conditions are considered to determine the amount of heat transfer from the gas to the casing by means of CFD. Both conjugate approach and wall fixed temperature have been considered to compute the heat transfer coefficient, and more in general, the transition-piece thermal loads. Finally a discussion on the most convenient heat transfer coefficient expression is provided.Copyright

Unsteady CFD analysis of turbulent flow and heat transfer in a gas turbine blade trailing edge subjected to rotation

Internal cooling of gas turbine blade represents a challenging task involving several different phenomena as, among others, highly three-dimensional unsteady fluid flow, efficient heat transfer and structural design. This paper focuses on the analysis of the turbulent flow and heat transfer inside a typical wedge–shaped trailing edge cooling duct of a gas turbine blade. In the configuration under scrutiny the coolant flows inside the duct in radial direction and it leaves the blade through the trailing edge after a 90 deg turning.At first an analysis of the flow and thermal fields in stationary conditions was carried out. Then the effects of rotational motion were investigated for a rotation number of 0.275. The rotation axis here considered is normal to the inflow and outflow bulk velocity, representing schematically a highly loaded blade configuration.The work aimed to i) analyse the dynamic of the vortical structures under the influence of strong body forces and the constraints induced by the internal geometry and ii) to study the impact of such motions on the mechanisms of heat removal. The final aim was to verify the design of the equipment and to detect the possible presence of regions subjected to high thermal loads.The analysis is carried out using the well assessed open source code OpenFOAM written in C++ and widely validated by several scientists and researchers around the world. The unsteadiness of the flow inside the trailing edge required to adopt models that accurately reconstructed the flow field. As the computational costs associated to LES (especially in the near wall regions) largely exceed the available resources, we chose for the simulation the SAS model of Menter, that was validated in a series of benchmark and industrially relevant test cases and allowed to reconstruct a part of the turbulence spectra through a scale-adaptive mechanism. Assessment of the obtained results with steady-state k-ω SST computations and available experimental results was carried out.The present analysis demonstrated that a strong unsteadiness develops inside the trailing edge and that the rotation generated strong secondary motions that enhanced the dynamic of heat removal, leading to a less severe temperature distribution on the heated surface w.r.t the non rotating case.Copyright

Development of Numerical Tools for Stator-Rotor Cavities Calculation in Heavy-Duty Gas Turbines

In high performance heavy-duty engines, turbine inlet temperature is considerably higher than the melting point of the metals used for turbine components e.g. nozzle guide vanes, turbine rotor blades, platforms and discs, etc. Cooling of those components is therefore essential and is achieved by diverting a few percent of the compressed air from extraction points in the compressor and passing it to the turbine through stationary ducts and over rotating shafts and discs. All those elements form the so-called secondary air system of the gas turbine, whose correct design is hence fundamental for safety, reliability and performance of the engine. Secondary air system analysis is generally performed using one dimensional calculation procedures, based correlations both for pressure losses and heat transfer coefficient evaluations. Such calculation approach, usually used in industry, takes advantages in terms of reduced computational resources. Besides, for those elements of air systems where multidimensional flow effects are not negligible and the flow field structure is highly complex, the one-dimensional–correlative modeling needs to be supported by CFD investigations. Among these elements, rotating cavities need a careful modeling in order to correctly estimate discs temperature and the minimum amount of purge air to prevent hot gas ingestion. Ansaldo Energia is facing the investigation of secondary air system of Vx4.3A gas turbine models also by using numerical tools developed by Dipartimento di Energetica “Sergio Stecco” of University of Florence. They include both a one-dimensional cavity solver and a 3D unstructured finite volume code of compressible Navier-Stokes Equation based on open source C++ Open-Foam libraries for continuum mechanics. The first numerical tool has been widely employed in simplified analysis of stator-rotor cavities and is undergoing to be integrated into a in-house lumped-parameters fluid network solver simulating the entire secondary air system. This paper is aimed at discussing some interesting results from numerical tests performed with the above discussed programs on stator-rotor cavities of a V94.3A2 gas turbine. Such numerical analysis was addressed both for better understanding the flow phenomena in the wheel space regions and for testing and verifying the experimental correlations and the calculation procedure implemented in the one-dimensional program. A detailed comparative analysis between the two different codes will be shown, both in adiabatic and heat transfer conditions.Copyright

Numerical Characterization of Hot Gas Ingestion Through Turbine Rim Seals

This paper deals with a numerical study aimed at the characterization of hot gas ingestion through turbine rim seals. The numerical campaign focused on an experimental facility which models ingress through the rim seal into the upstream wheel-space of an axial-turbine stage. Single-clearance arrangements were considered in the form of axial- and radial-seal gap configurations. With the radial-seal clearance configuration, CFD steady state solutions were able to predict the system sealing effectiveness over a wide range of coolant mass flow rates reasonably well. The greater insight of flow field provided by the computations illustrates the thermal buffering effect when ingress occurs: for a given sealing flow rate, the effectiveness on the rotor was significantly higher than that on the stator due to the axial flow of hot gases from stator to rotor caused by pumping effects. The predicted effectiveness on the rotor was compared with a theoretical model for the thermal buffering effect showing good agreement. When the axial-seal clearance arrangement is considered, the agreement between CFD and experiments worsens; the variation of sealing effectiveness with coolant flow rate calculated by means of the simulations display a distinct kink. It was found that the ”kink phenomenon” can be ascribed to an over-estimation of the egress spoiling effects due to turbulence modelling limitations. Despite some weaknesses in the numerical predictions, the paper shows that CFD can be used to characterize the sealing performance of axial- and radial-clearance turbine rim seals.

Heat Transfer Augmentation Due to Coolant Extraction on the Cold Side of Active Clearance Control Manifolds

Jet array is an arrangement typically used to cool several gas turbine parts. Some examples of such applications can be found in the impingement cooled region of gas turbine airfoils or in the turbine blade tip clearances control of large aero-engines. In the open literature, several contributions focus on the impingement jets formation and deal with the heat transfer phenomena that take place on the impingement target surface. However, deficiencies of general studies emerge when the internal convective cooling of the impinging system feeding channels is concerned. In this work, an aerothermal analysis of jet arrays for active clearance control (ACC) was performed; the aim was the definition of a correlation for the internal (i.e., within the feeding channel) convective heat transfer coefficient augmentation due to the coolant extraction operated by the bleeding holes. The data were taken from a set of computational fluid-dynamics (CFD) Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) simulations, in which the behavior of the cooling system was investigated over a wide range of fluid-dynamics conditions. More in detail, several different holes arrangements were investigated with the aim of evaluating the influence of the hole spacing on the heat transfer coefficient distribution. Tests were conducted by varying the feeding channel Reynolds number in a wide range of real engine operative conditions. An in depth analysis of the numerical data set has underlined the opportunity of an efficient reduction through the local suction ratio (SR) of hole and feeding pipe, local Reynolds number, and manifold porosity: the dependence of the heat transfer coefficient enhancement factor (EF) from these parameter is roughly exponential.

Multi-Coupled Numerical Analysis of Advanced Lean Burn Injection Systems

Lean burn aero-engine combustors usually exploit advanced prefilming airblast injection systems in order to promote the formation of highly homogeneous air-fuel mixtures with the main aim of reducing NOx emissions. The combustion process is strongly influenced by the liquid fuel preparation and a reliable prediction of pollutant emissions requires proper tools able to consider the most important aspects characterizing liquid film evolution and primary breakup. This paper presents the numerical analysis of an advanced lean burn injection system using a multi-coupled two-phase flow three-dimensional solver developed on the basis of OpenFOAM modelling and numerics. The solver allows the coupled solution of gas-phase, droplets and liquid film exploiting correlation-based and theoretical models for liquid film primary atomization. A detailed analysis of the liquid film evolution is presented together with an investigation of the influence of film modelling and primary breakup on the combustion process at different operating conditions. The combustion field is strongly influenced by the characteristics of droplet population generated by the liquid film and this study proposes a computational setup, suitable for industrial calculations, able to account for all the main physical processes that characterize advanced prefilming airblast injection systems.Copyright

Numerical Analysis of Effusion Plates for Combustor Liners Cooling With Varying Density Ratio

Effusion cooling technology has been assessed in past years as one of the most efficient methods to maintain allowable working temperature of combustor liners. Despite many efforts reported in literature to characterize the cooling performances of those devices, detailed analysis of the mixing process between coolant and hot gas are difficult to perform especially in case superposition and density ratio effects become important. Furthermore, recent investigations on the acoustic properties of these perforations pointed out the challenge to maintain optimal cooling performance also with orthogonal holes which showed higher sound absorption.This paper performs a CFD analysis of the flow and thermal field associated with adiabatic wall conditions to compute the cooling effectiveness. The geometry consists of an effusion cooling plate drilled with 18 holes and fed separately with a cold and hot gas flow. Two types of perforations equivalent in porosity and pitches are investigated to assess the influence of the drilling angle between 30 and 90 deg. The reference conditions considered in this work comprehend an effective blowing ratio ranging between 1 and 3 at isothermal conditions (reaching a maximum hole Reynolds number of 10000) and high inlet turbulence intensity (17%). This set of conditions was exploited to perform a validation of the numerical procedure against detailed experimental data presented in another paper. Inlet turbulence effects highlighted by measurements for the slanted perforation were also investigated simulating a low turbulence condition corresponding to 1.6% of intensity. Furthermore the nominal DR = 1.0 was increased up to 1.7 to expand the available data set towards typical working conditions for aero-engines.Steady state RANS calculations were performed with the commercial code ANSYS® CFX, modeling turbulence by means of the k — ω SST. In order to include anisotropic diffusion effects due to turbulence damping in the near wall region, the turbulence model is corrected considering a tensorial definition of the eddy viscosity with an algebraic correction to dope its stream-span components. Computational grids were finely clustered close to the main plate and inside the holes to obtain y+ < 1, to maximize solver accuracy according to previous similar analysis.Copyright