Numerical Investigation of Active Tip-clearance Control through Tip Cooling Injection in an Axial Turbine Cascade

This paper presents a numerical investigation of an active tip-clearance control method based on cooling injectionfrom the blade tip surface. It aims to study the influences of air injection on controlling tip clearance flow, withemphasis on the effects of the injection location on secondary flow and the potential thermal benefits from thecooling jet. The results show that injection location plays an important role in the redistribution of secondary flowwithin the cascade passage. Injection located much closer to the pressure-side comer performs better in reducingtip clearance massflow and its associated losses. However, it also intensifies tip passage vortex, due to less restraintderiving from the reduced tip clearance vortex. Lower plenum total pressure is required to inject equivalentamount of cooling air, but the heat transfer condition on the blade tip surface is a bit worse than that with injectionfrom the reattachment region. Thus the optimum location of air injection should be at the tip separation vortex region.

NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF TIP-CLEARANCE FLOW IN CASCADE

The tip-clearance flow in a cascade was numerically simulated by solving theRANS equations of incompressible fluids. The computational model was based upon the artificialcompressibility formulation proposed by Chorin. The Baldwin-Lomax turbulence model was used to makethe governing equations closed. For the specific structure of tip-clearance flow, a multi-block gridstructure was adopted to facilitate numerical compulations. The comparison of numerical resultswith experimental data indicates that the present method is capable of simulating tip-clearanceflows with satisfactory accuracy.

Experimental and numerical investigation of the impacts of rotor tip-rake on excitation forces of pump-jet propulsors

The tip-clearance flow in a pump-jet propulsor exerts great impacts on the fluctuating pressures and resultant unsteady forces,which are important sources of structural vibrations and radiated noise underwater.The blade geometry close to the tip is an important factor determining the vortex strength in the tip-clearance flow.In the open-water condition,the effects of raking the rotor tips on the duct-surface fluctuating pressures and the resultant unsteady forces acting on different components of the propulsor are investigated via physical model experiments and the numerical solution of Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes(RANS)equations coupled with the SST k-ωturbulence model.The measured and simulated results of hydrodynamic pressures are consistent to each other,and the simulated flows help better understand why the fluctuating pressures change with the tip geometry.The strong fluctuations of duct-surface pressures are caused by intensive tip separation vortices.The duct-surface pressure fluctuations are effectively reduced by using the rake distribution near the tip towards blade back side and,for the combination of the five-bladed rotor and the seven-bladed stator,the resultant unsteady horizontal(and vertical)forces acting on the duct and stator are also reduced;while increasing rake leads to negative effect on pressure fluctuations and unsteady horizontal(and vertical)forces acting on all the components of the propulsor.

LES method of the tip clearance vortex cavitation in a propelling pump with special emphasis on the cavitation-vortex interaction

The turbulent cavitating flow around the propelling pump tip clearance is numerically simulated using the large eddy simulation(LES)method coupled with the Zwart-Gerber-Belamri(ZGB)cavitation model to investigate the cavitation-vortex interaction mechanism.The calculated cavitation structures around the blades are in a remarkable agreement with the experimental results.The distributions of the tip clearance vortex under two cavitation conditions are obtained and compared.The results show that the cavitation development enhances the vorticity generation and the flow unsteadiness around the tip clearance of a propelling pump.Vortices are basically located around the cavitation areas,particularly in the tip clearance region,during the cavitation.The relative vorticity transport equation is applied for the cavitating turbulent flows and it is further indicated that the vortex stretching term makes the main contribution in the vortex production,and the baroclinic torque and dilation terms are important source terms for the vorticity generation in the cavitating flow.In addition,the viscous diffusion term and the Coriolis force term are significant in modifying the vorticity field inside the blade tip clearance.