Riccardo Da Soghe

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

Volume Of Fluid (VOF) Analysis of Oil-Jet Lubrication for High-Speed Spur Gears Using an Adaptive Meshing Approach

In high speed gearbox systems, the lubrication is generally provided using nozzles to create small oil jets that feed oil into the meshing zone. It is essential that the gear teeth are properly lubricated and that enough oil gets into the tooth spaces to permit sufficient cooling and prevent gearbox failure. A good understanding of the oil behaviour inside the gearbox is therefore desirable, to minimize lubrication losses and reduce the oil volume involved, and ensure gearbox reliability.In order to reach these objectives, a comprehensive numerical study of a single oil jet impinging radially on a single spur gear teeth has been carried out using the Volume of Fluid (VOF) method. The aims of this study are to evaluate the resistant torque produced by the oil jet lubrication, and to develop a physical understanding of the losses deriving from the oil-gear interaction, studying the droplets and ligaments formation produced by the breaking up of the jet as well as the formation of an oil film on the surface of the teeth.URANS calculations have been performed with the commercial code ANSYS FLUENT and an adaptive mesh approach has been developed as a way of significantly reducing the simulation costs. This method allows an automatic mesh refinement and/or coarsening at the air-oil interface based on the volume of fluid gradient, increasing the accuracy of the predictions of oil break-up as well as minimizing numerical diffusion of the interface. A global sensitivity analysis of adopted models has been carried out and a numerical set-up has been defined. Finally several simulations varying the oil injection angle have been performed, in order to evaluate how this parameter affects the resistant torque and the lubrication performances.© 2015 ASME

Numerical Characterization of Aerodynamic Losses of Jet Arrays for Gas Turbine Applications

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 order to correctly evaluate the impinging jet mass flow rate, the characterization of holes discharge coefficient is a compulsory activity. In this work an aerodynamic analysis of jet arrays for active clearance control was performed; the aim was the definition of a correlation for the discharge coefficient (Cd ) of a generic hole of the array. The data were taken from a set of CFD RANS simulations, in which the behaviour 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 discharge coefficient distribution. Tests were conducted by varying the jet Reynolds number in a wide range of effective engine operative conditions (Re = 2000–12000, Pressure-Ratio = 1.01–1.6). To point out the reliability of the CFD analysis, some comparisons with experimental data, measured at the “Department of Energy Engineering” of the University of Florence, were drawn. An in depth analysis of the numerical data set has underlined the opportunity of an efficient reduction through the mass velocity ratio of hole and feeding pipe: the dependence of the discharge coefficients from this parameter is roughly logarithmic.Copyright

Analysis of Gas Turbine Rotating Cavities by an One-Dimensional Model

Reliable design of secondary air system is one of the main tasks for the safety, unfailing and performance of gas turbine engines. To meet the increasing demands of gas turbines design, improved tools in prediction of the secondary air system behavior over a wide range of operating conditions are needed. A real gas turbine secondary air system includes several components, therefore its analysis is not carried out through a complete CFD approach. Usually, that predictions are performed using codes, based on simplified approach which allows to evaluate the flow characteristics in each branch of the air system requiring very poor computational resources and few calculation time. Generally the available simplified commercial packages allow to correctly solve only some of the components of a real air system and often the elements with a more complex flow structure cannot be studied; among such elements, the analysis of rotating cavities is very hard. This paper deals with a design-tool developed at the University of Florence for the simulation of rotating cavities. This simplified in-house code solves the governing equations for steady one-dimensional axysimmetric flow using experimental correlations both to incorporate flow phenomena caused by multidimensional effects, like heat transfer and flow field losses, and to evaluate the circumferential component of velocity. Although this calculation approach does not enable a correct modeling of the turbulent flow within a wheel space cavity, the authors tried to create an accurate model taking into account the effects of inner and outer flow extraction, rotor and stator drag, leakages, injection momentum and, finally, the shroud/rim seal effects on cavity ingestion. The simplified calculation tool was designed to simulate the flow in a rotating cavity with radial outflow both with a Batchelor and/or Stewartson flow structures. A primary 1D-code testing campaign is available in the literature [1]. In the present paper the authors develop, using CFD tools, reliable correlations for both stator and rotor friction coefficients and provide a full 1D-code validation comparing, due to lack of experimental data, the in house design-code predictions with those evaluated by CFD.Copyright

Turbine Stator Well CFD Studies: Effects of Cavity Cooling Air Flow

The improvement of the aerodynamic efficiency of gas turbine components is becoming more and more difficult to achieve. Nevertheless there are still some devices that could be improved to enhance engine performance. Further investigations on the internal air cooling systems, for instance, may lead to a reduction of cavities cooling air with a direct beneficial effect on engine performance. At the same time, further investigations on heat transfer mechanisms within turbine cavities may help to optimize cooling air flows saving engine life duration. This paper presents some CFD preliminary studies conducted on an two-stage axial turbine rig developed in a research programme on internal air systems funded by EU, named the Main Annulus Gas Path Interactions (MAGPI). Each turbine stage consists of 39 vanes and 78 rotating blades and the modelled domain includes both the main gas path of the two turbine stages and the second stator well. Pre experimental tests CFD computations were planned in order to point out the reliability of numerical models in the description of the flow patterns in the main annulus and in the cavities. Several computational meshes were considered with steady and unsteady approaches in order to assess the sensitivity to computational approach regarding the evaluation of the interactions between main annulus and disk cavities flows. Results were obtained for several cavities cooling air mass-flow rates and data were further analyzed to investigate the influence of the sealing flow inside the main annulus. MAGPI project is a 4 years Specific-Targeted-Research-Project (2007–2011) and its consortium includes six universities and nine gas turbines manufacturing companies. The project is focused on the analysis of interactions between primary and secondary air systems achieving a novel approach as these systems have, up to now, only been considered separately. In particular one of the tasks of the project will focus on heat transfer phenomena and delivering experimental data which will be used to validate the advanced design tools used by industries (CFD codes and correlative formulations).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.

Heat Transfer Enhancement due to Coolant Extraction on the Cold Side of Effusion Cooling Plates

Effusion cooling represents one the most innovative technique to limit and control the metal temperature of aero-engine combustors liner and, recently, attention has been paid by the scientific community on the characterization and the definition of design practices of such devices. Most of these studies were focused on the heat transfer on the hot side of effusion cooling plates while just few contributions deal with the effusion plates cold side convective cooling. This paper reports a numerical survey aimed at the characterization of the convective cooling at the effusion plates cold side. Several effusion holes spacing are accounted for in conjunction with representative operating conditions.The study led to the development of an empirical correlation for the prediction of the cold side heat transfer coefficient enhancement factor EF: it expresses the EF related to each extraction hole as a function of the pressure ratio β and the effusion plate porosity factor.Copyright

Numerical Simulation of Oil Jet Lubrication for High Speed Gears

The Geared Turbofan technology is one of the most promising engine configurations to significantly reduce the specific fuel consumption. In this architecture, a power epicyclical gearbox is interposed between the fan and the low pressure spool. Thanks to the gearbox, fan and low pressure spool can turn at different speed, leading to higher engine bypass ratio. Therefore the gearbox efficiency becomes a key parameter for such technology. Further improvement of efficiency can be achieved developing a physical understanding of fluid dynamic losses within the transmission system. These losses are mainly related to viscous effects and they are directly connected to the lubrication method. In this work, the oil injection losses have been studied by means of CFD simulations. A numerical study of a single oil jet impinging on a single high speed gear has been carried out using the VOF method. The aim of this analysis is to evaluate the resistant torque due to the oil jet lubrication, correlating the torque data with the oil-gear interaction phases. URANS calculations have been performed using an adaptive meshing approach, as a way of significantly reducing the simulation costs. A global sensitivity analysis of adopted models has been carried out and a numerical setup has been defined.

Experimental and Numerical Analysis of Multiple Impingement Jet Arrays for an Active Clearance Control System

The turbine blade tip clearances control in large aeroengines is currently performed by means of impinging fan air on the outer case flanges. The aim of the present study is to evaluate both the heat transfer coefficient and the adiabatic thermal effectiveness characteristics of an engine-like ACC system, and in particular, to comprehend the effects of the undercowl flow on the impingement jets. The considered geometry replicates the impingement tubes and the by-pass duct used in active control clearance systems. The tube’s internal diameter is D = 12mm, the cooling holes’ diameter is d = 1mm and the span-wise pitch is Sy/d = 12. In order to simulate the undercowl flow, the impingement arrays are inserted inside a tunnel that replicates the typical shape of a real engine by-pass duct. Tests were conducted varying both the mainstream Reynolds number and the jets Reynolds number in a range typical of real-engine operative conditions (Rej = 2000–10000, β = 1.05–1.15). Numerical calculations are finally proposed to point out if CFD is able to confidently reproduce the experimental evidences.Copyright