Tip Clearance Flows in Turbine Cascades

This article describes the effects of some factors on the tip clearance flow in axial linear turbine cascades. The measurements of the total pressure loss coefficient are made at the cascade outlets by using a five-hole probe at exit Mach numbers of 0.10, 0.14 and 0.19. At each exit Mach number, experiments are performed at the tip clearance heights of 1.0%, 1.5%, 2.0%, 2.5% and 3.0% of the blade height. The effects of the non-uniform tip clearance height of each blade in the pitchwise direction are also studied. The results show that at a given tip clearance height, generally, total pressure loss rises with exit Mach numbers proportionally. At a fixed exit Mach number, the total pressure loss augments nearly proportionally as the tip clearance height increases. The increased tip clearance heights in the tip regions of two adjacent blades are to be blame for the larger clearance loss of the center blade. Compared to the effects of the tip clearance height, the effects of the exit Mach number and the pitchwise variation of the tip clearance height on the cascade total pressure loss are so less significant to be omitted.

NUMERICAL ANALYSIS OF THE INFLUENCE OF THE TIP CLEARANCE FLOWS ON THE UNSTEADY CAVITATING FLOWS IN A THREE- D IMENSIONAL INDUCER

To clarify the influences of the tip clearance flows on the unsteady cavitating flow, the three-dimensional unsteady cavitating flows through both the two-dimensional cascades and the three-dimensional inducer with and without tip clearance are performed numerically. The governing equations for the compressible fluid flow with the DES turbulence model are employed with the assumption of the isentropic process of liquid phase. The evolution of cavities is represented as the source/sink of vapor phase. The basic equations in the curve linear coordinate are solved by the finite difference method. As the results of the three-dimensional cavitating flows through the two-dimensional cascades, the tip clearance flows from the pressure side to the suction side of the blade produces the tip vortex cavitation, which affects the sheet cavitation on the leading edge of the next blade and enhances the blockage effect near the casing than the flows without tip clearance. On the other hand, in the case of the three-dimensional inducer, the large backflow cavitation is observed around the inlet of the inducer, where the cavities are developed on the casing by the tip clearance flows. The large pressure gradient between the non-cavitating pressure side and the cavitating suction side enhances the tip clearance flows. The calculation considering the tip clearance reproduces the developed cavitation region similar to that of experimental visualizations. Additionally, the backflow cavitation rotates with the speed slower than the rotation speed of the inducer. Then, the rotation of backflow cavitation causes the periodic fluctuation of the outlet pressure greater than that of the inlet pressure.

Unsteady Tip Clearance Flow in an Isolated Axial Compressor Rotor

The paper investigates effects of operating conditions, tip clearance sizes and external unsteady excitations on the unsteady tip clearance flow in an isolated axial compressor rotor by unsteady 3D Navier-Stokes simulations. The results show that the unsteady tip clearance vortex takes a periodic flow behavior in the rotor tip region. With the decrease of the flow coefficient, the unsteady tip clearance vortex is enhanced and its frequency becomes lower. A larger tip clearance size can cause bigger unsteady fluctuation amplitude and a lower fluctuation frequency of the tip clearance vortex at the near stall operating condition. The unsteady excitation with the natural frequency of the tip clearance vortex can enhance the unsteadiness of the tip clearance vortex and improve the overall rotor performance. The frequency of the unsteady tip clearance vortex is independent of external unsteady excitations with different frequencies.

Numerical Simulation on the Effect of Tip Clearance Size on Unsteadiness in Tip Clearance Flow

Unsteadiness of tip clearance flow with three different tip clearance sizes is numerically investigated in this paper. NASA Rotor 67 is chosen as the computational model. It is found that among all the simulated cases, the un- steadiness exists when the size of the tip clearance is equal to or larger than design tip clearance size. The relative total pressure coefficient contours indicate that region of influence by tip leakage flow augments with the increase of tip clearance size at a fixed mass flow rate. Root Mean Square contours of static pressure distribution in the rotor tip region are provided to illustrate that for design tip clearance （1.1% tip chord） the strongest fluctuating region is located on pressure side of blade near leading edge, while for the larger tip clearance （2.2% tip chord）, it is in the region of the interaction between the shock wave and the tip leakage flow.

Lock-in phenomenon of tip clearance flow and its influence on aerodynamic damping under specified vibration on an axial transonic compressor rotor

In this study,the lock-in phenomenon of Tip Clearance Flow(TCF)instabilities and their relationship to blade vibration are investigated numerically on an axial transonic rotor with a large tip clearance.The capabilities of simulating instability flow and lock-in phenomenon are verified on a transonic rotor and a NACA0012 airfoil by comparing with the test data,respectively.The lock-in phenomenon is first numerically confirmed that may occur to TCF instabilities when its frequency is close to the blade vibration frequency.The lock-in region becomes wider with the vibration amplitude increasing,and it is also affected by modal shapes.For the rotor at the simulation conditions in this study,the bending mode results in a wider lock-in region than the torsional mode.In the lock-in region,the phase difference between the Tip Clearance Vortex(TCV)and the blade vibration changes with the flow condition and the frequency ratio of the blade vibration and the TCV instabilities.The frequency of the TCV instabilities reduces with the mass flow decreasing.Therefore,reducing mass flow and increasing frequency ratio have similar effects on the TCV phase,which causes a significant variation on the unsteady pressure amplitude in the blade tip area.Thus,the aerodynamic damping changes significantly with the TCV phase.The aerodynamic damping displays a nonlinear relationship with the vibration amplitude,and it changes from negative to positive with the vibration amplitude increasing at the same frequency ratio.The negative damping is mainly provided by the tip area of the blade.For unlocked conditions,the period of the TCF instabilities fluctuates over time,and it cannot be directly separated by their frequency features.Inter Blade Phase Angle(IBPA)also has an important influence on the feature of the TCV instabilities.The occurrence of frequency lock-in also requires“appropriate”IBPA.For the examined working conditions,the frequency lock-in occurs under 0 ND(Nodal Diameter),but not under 8 ND.However,no matter 0 ND or 8 ND,the phase of TCV always locks onto the IBPA at the examined conditions.

Unsteady Tip Clearance Flow Pattern in an Isolated Axial Compressor Rotor with Micro Tip Injection

A numerical study of the effect of discrete micro tip injection on unsteady tip clearance flow pattern in an isolated axial compressor rotor is presented, intending to better understand the flow mechanism behind stall control measures that act on tip clearance flow. Under the influence of injection the unsteadiness of self-induced tip clearance flow could be weakened. Also the radial migration of tip clearance vortex is confined to a smaller radial extent near the rotor tip and the trajectory of tip clearance flow is pushed more downstream. So the injection is beneficial to improve compressor stability and increase static pressure rise near rotor tip region. The results of injection with different injected mass flow rates show that for the special type of injector adopted in the paper the effect of injection on tip clearance flow may be different according to the relative strength between these two streams of flow. For a fixed injected mass flow rate, reducing the injector area to increase injection velocity can improve the effect of injection on tip clearance flow and thus the compressor stability. A comparison of calculations between single blade passage and multiple blade passages validates the utility of single passage computations to investigate the tip clearance flow for the case without injection and its interaction with injected flow for the case with tip injection.

The Tip Leakage Flow Structure of an Axial Fan with Tip Clearance

Experiment and numerical simulation technique are used to investigate the tip leakage flow in an axial fan with tip clearance at the design condition. The flow field in the tip region of fan is measured using a PDA (Particle Dynamics Analysis) system. The flow is surveyed across the whole passage at fifteen axial locations (from the 100% axial chord in front of the leading edge to the 100% axial chord behind the trailing edge), mainly focusing on the outer 90% blade span. Both experiment measurement and numerical simulation indicates the leakage flow originated from the tip clearance along the chord rolls up into three dimensional spiral structure to form leakage flow vortex. The interaction of leakage flow and main flow will produce the low velocity zone, and block the flow. The leakage flow almost occupies the most part of flow passage behind the trailing edge.

Numerical Investigation of Tip Clearance Effects in an Axial Transonic Compressor

Numerical investigations of the Darmstadt transonic single stage compressor (DTC), in the Rotor1-Stator1 configuration, aimed at advancing the understanding of the effect of different rotor tip gaps and transition modelling on the blade surfaces are presented. Steady three dimensional Reynolds Averaged Navier Stokes (RANS) simulations were performed to obtain the flow fields for the different configurations at different operating conditions using the RANS-Solver TRACE. The stage geometry and the multi-block structured grid were generated by G3DMESH and a grid sensitivity analysis was conducted. For the clearance gap region, a fully gridded special H-grid was chosen. Comparisons were made between the flow characteristic at design speed, representative for a transonic flow regime, and at 65% speed, representative for a subsonic flow regime. The computations were used to analyse the flow phenomena through the tip clearance region for the different configurations and their impact on the performance of the compressor stage.

Numerical Investigation of the Unsteady Tip Leakage Flow and Rotating Stall Inception in a Transonic Compressor

It is well known that tip leakage flow has a strong effect on the compressor performance and stability. This paper reports on a numerical investigation of detailed flow structures in an isolated transonic compressor rotor-NASA Rotor 37 at near stall and stalled conditions aimed at improving understanding of changes in 3D tip leakage flow structures with rotating stall inception.Steady and unsteady 3D Navier-Stokes analyses were conducted to investigate flow structures in the same rotor.For steady analysis,the predicted results agree well with the experimental data for the estimation of compressor rotor global performance.For unsteady flow analysis, the unsteady flow nature caused by the breakdown of the tip leakage vortex in blade tip region in the transonic compressor rotor at near stall condition has been captured with a single blade passage.On the other hand, the time-accurate unsteady computations of multi-blade passage at near stall condition indicate that the unsteady breakdown of the tip leakage vortex triggered the short length-scale-spike type rotating stall inception at blade tip region.It was the forward spillage of the tip leakage flow at blade leading edge resulting in the spike stall inception. As the mass flow ratio is decreased,the rotating stall cell was further developed in the blade passage.

压气机叶顶微喷气扩稳研究

The mechanism of compressor stall margin enhancement using the tip air injection is explored.The transonic compressor,NASARotor 37,is taken as the object to study the tip clearance flow under active control of tip air injection by numerical simulations.The effects of injection parameters(injection total temperature,injection position,injection angle,injection mass flow,injection port size,injection type and etc)on the stall margin extension are emphatically analyzed.Results show that the enhancement of tip leakage vortex enlarges the low-energy region induced by the shock wave in the row channel when the working condition is moving to stall point.In addition,the enhancement of radial vortex increases its entrainment ability,which tends to expand separation zone.Once the tip injection imposed,the decrease of the leakage vortex intensity widens the stall margin,while the total pressure loss increases to some extent due to the mixing of the tip micro jet with the mainstream.It is found that injection parameters should be restricted to a moderate region so as to achieve a good stall margin extension without an excessive increase in the pressure loss.

Effect of Winglet Geometry Arrangement and Incidence on Tip Clearance Control in a Compressor Cascade

An experimental study is conducted to investigate the influences of blade tip winglet on the flow field of a compressor cascade. The tests are performed in a low speed linear cascade with stationary endwall, with three blade tip configurations, including the baseline tip, the suction-side winglet tip and the pressure-side winglet tip. The fiowfield downstream of the cascade is measured using five-hole probe, from which the three-dimensional velocity field, vorticity field and pressure field are obtained. Static pressure measurements are made on the endwall above the blade row using pressure taps embedded in the plywood endwall. All measurements are made at both design and off-design conditions for tip clearance level of about 2 percent of the blade chord. The results revealed the incidence variation significantly affects the secondary flow and the associated loss field downstream of the cascade, where the tip leakage vortex and passage vortex exist as the major contributors on the field. The winglet geometry arrangements can change the trajectory of the tip leakage vortex. The suction-side winglet tip blade provides a lower overall total pressure loss coefficient when compared to the baseline tip blade and pressure-side winglet tip blade at all incidence angles.

Tip-leakage flow loss reduction in a two-stage turbine using axisymmetric-casing contouring

In order to reduce the losses caused by tip-leakage flow, axisymmetric contouring is applied to the casing of a two-stage unshrouded high pressure turbine（HPT） of aero-engine in this paper. This investigation focuses on the effects of contoured axisymmetric-casing on the blade tipleakage flow. While the size of tip clearance remains the same as the original design, the rotor casing and the blade tip are obtained with the same contoured arc shape. Numerical calculation results show that a promotion of 0.14% to the overall efficiency is achieved. Detailed analysis indicates that it reduces the entropy generation rate caused by the complex vortex structure in the rotor tip region, especially in the tip-leakage vortex. The low velocity region in the leading edge（LE） part of the tip gap is enlarged and the pressure side/tip junction separation bubble extends much further away from the leading edge in the clearance. So the blocking effect of pressure side/tip junction separation bubble on clearance flow prevents more flow on the tip pressure side from leaking to the suction side, which results in weaker leakage vortex and less associated losses.

Effect of wire mesh casing treatment on axial compressor performance and stability

In this paper,a kind of Wire Mesh Casing Treatment(WMCT)is proposed to improve the stable operating range of the compressor.In contrast to the traditional circumferential groove,as for WMCT,a layer of wire mesh is laid on the surface of the circumferential groove.Parametric studies were conducted on the low-speed axial flow compressor,including the groove width,axial location,and mesh count.The optimum axial location for WMCT is related to its groove width.A higher wire mesh count results in a smaller compressor stall margin improvement.Steady simulations were carried out to study the effect of WMCT on the flow structure of the compressor.The wire mesh in the WMCT has a certain flow resistance,which restricts the flow into and out of the groove.Due to the WMCT,the flow parameter in the tip region of the rotor is less sensitive to changes in the operating conditions of the compressor.The WMCT causes the rotor tip blade loading to shift backward,inhibiting the formation of spill forward of the leakage flow,and thus improving the stability of the compressor.The flow resistance on the groove surface is a new degree-of-freedom for the casing treatment designer.

Non-adiabatic flow characteristics of micro impeller

Non-adiabatic working condition is one of the major causes of performance deterioration in micro gas turbine engines.Complex micro scale geometry,low Reynolds number operating condition and high surface to volume ratio all lead to severe heat transfer.This paper first established a simple heat transfer model to determine appropriate non-adiabatic boundary condition for computational fluid dynamics(CFD)simulations.Isothermal wall temperature is identified as a heat transfer boundary based on model analysis in combination with material selection for pre-design of the engine and verified by the experiment carried out on directed structure applied in the model.A series of numerical simulations with adiabatic and non-adiabatic boundary conditions is then carried out to study the flow characteristics of high speed,low Reynolds number micro impeller.The physical nature for significant performance degradation related to flow behavior changes due to heat transfer effect is revealed by detailed analysis of typical flow features extracted from the comparative investigation.The result established the basis for heat transfer modeling of micro impeller purposing implications for design modification in order to attain high efficiency and better performance.

A Similitude Method and the Corresponding Blade Design of a Low-Speed Large-Scale Axial Compressor Rotor

A similitude method to model the tip clearance flow in a high-speed compressor with a low-speed model is presented in this paper.The first step of this method is the derivation of similarity criteria for tip clearance flow,on the basis of an inviscid model of tip clearance flow.The aerodynamic parameters needed for the model design are then obtained from a numerical simulation of the target high-speed compressor rotor.According to the aerodynamic and geometric parameters of the target compressor rotor,a large-scale low-speed rotor blade is designed with an inverse blade design program.In order to validate the similitude method,the features of tip clearance flow in the low-speed model compressor are compared with the ones in the high-speed compressor at both design and small flow rate points.It is found that not only the trajectory of the tip leakage vortex but also the interface between the tip leakage flow and the incoming main flow in the high-speed compressor match well with that of its low speed model.These results validate the effectiveness of the similitude method for the tip clearance flow proposed in this paper.