Investigation of flow characteristics in a rotor-stator cavity under crossflow using wall-modelled large-eddy simulation

Rotor-stator cavities are frequently encountered in engineering applications such as gas turbine engines.They are usually subject to an external hot mainstream crossflow which in general is highly swirled under the effect of the nozzle guide vanes.To avoid hot mainstream gas ingress,the cavity is usually purged by a stream of sealing flow.The interactions between the external crossflow,cavity flow,and sealing flow are complicated and involve all scales of turbulent unsteadiness and flow instability which are beyond the resolution of the Reynolds-average approach.To cope with such a complex issue,a wall-modeled large-eddy simulation(WMLES)approach is adopted in this study.In the simulation,a 20°sector model is used and subjected to a uniform pre-swirled external crossflow and a stream of radial sealing flow.It is triggered by a convergent Reynoldsaveraged Navier-Stokes(RANS)result in which the shear stress transport(SST)turbulent model is used.In the WMLES simulation,the Smagoringsky sub-grid scale(SGS)model is applied.A scalar transportation equation is solved to simulate the blending and transportation process in the cavity.The overall flow field characteristics and deviation between RANS and WMLES results are discussed first.Both RANS and WMLES results show a Batchelor flow mode,while distinct deviation is also observed.Deviations in the small-radius region are caused by the insufficiency of the RANS approach in capturing the small-scale vortex structures in the boundary layer while deviations in the large-radius region are caused by the insufficiency of the RANS approach in predicting the external crossflow ingestion.The boundary layer vortex and external ingestion are then discussed in detail,highlighting the related flow instabilities.Finally,the large-flow structures induced by external flow ingress are analyzed using unsteady pressure oscillation signals.

Influence of Secondary Sealing Flow on Performance of Turbine Axial Rim Seals

Purge flow is of great importance in cooling turbine disks and sealing rotor-stator disc cavity to reduce hot gas ingestion in gas turbines.The amount of cooling air extracted from the compressor is crucial to engine efficiency.Excessive sealing air will cause not only a reduction in work transfer but also an increase in aerodynamic losses caused by the mixing of main and sealing flow.In order to simplify rim seal structure while ensuring high sealing efficiency,the current paper optimizes the flow path of the secondary air system and presents a new rim seal structure with auxiliary sealing holes transporting a certain amount of secondary sealing flow.The new structure was compared with the conventional counterpart using validated CFD methods,showing that the additional secondary sealing flow is possible to improve sealing efficiency in disk cavity.The current paper investigates the secondary sealing flow with and without swirl(the angle of auxiliary sealing hole inclination is 0°and 45°respectively),while maintaining the total amount of the sealing flow,flowrate ratio of sealing air(main sealing flow rate versus secondary sealing flow rate=1:1,2:1,3:1,4:1),found that both two parameters have essential impacts on sealing efficiency.The relationship between these two parameters and sealing efficiency was obtained,and it provides a new philosophy for the design of rim seal in gas turbines.

Numerical Investigations of Film Cooling Characteristics of Interrupted Slot and Trench Holes on a Vane Endwall

This paper describes film cooling characteristics of the novel combined configuration employing interrupted slot and trench holes on a vane endwall.Interrupted slot,formed by uneven thermal expansion between combustor and high-pressure turbine vane,can improve adiabatic film cooling effectiveness of the leading edge and pressure side-endwall junction by inhibiting the development of horseshoes vortex.Holes embedded into a straight trench were introduced to improve film efficiency comparing to cylindrical holes on vane passage endwall.The influences of lateral pressure gradient,slot coolant and step on crossflow of the hole coolant in trench were mainly discussed.Three dimensional Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations with shear stress turbulence model(SST k-ω)were used to obtain the flowfields and adiabatic film cooling effectiveness of a cascade model.Four hole blowing ratios M=0.5,1.0,1.5,2.0 and two axial positions X/Cax=–0.05,0 were considered.The coolant crossflow in trench on flat endwall of cascade passage trends to flow towards suction side due to the lateral pressure gradient rather than both sides on flat plate.For combined configuration of interrupted slot and trench holes,the step vortex rolls up hole coolant upstream of trench which changesηdistributions comparing to that on flat passage endwall.Comparing to the cylindrical holes,better film cooling performance can still be obtained when arranging trench holes under high blowing ratios.The influence of hole’s axial positions was also discussed.