The amount of cooling air assigned to seal high pressure turbine rim cavities is critical for performance as well as component life. Insufficient air leads to excessive hot annulus gas ingestion and its penetration deep into the cavity compromising disk or cover plate life. Excessive purge air, on the other hand, adversely affects performance. This paper is Part-2 of the authors’ work on ingestion reported last year [1]. Whereas, the main focus of that investigation was to qualitatively describe ingestion driven by annulus circumferential pressure asymmetry under constant annulus conditions and rotational speed, in this paper, the research team investigated the variation of annulus circumferential pressure fluctuation and rotational speed on the double overlap platform rim seal cavity reported in Part-1, and mapped out the resulting non-dimensional minimum sealing flow (minimum value of Cw or Cw,min) as it relates to entrained ingestion in the absence of cavity cooling flow (Cw,ent). As was done in Part-1, the runs were made with 3D CFD in setup/run mode option using Fine/Turbo. At two rotational speeds, annulus conditions were varied by reducing turbine inlet pressure (i.e. mass flow) from the baseline operating condition, and the resulting pressure fluctuation was quantified. In addition, a preliminary investigation to assess the aft-located mixing plane steady state solution for this study was performed. The results yielded the linear decrease in Cw,ent at fixed rotational Reynolds number as annulus Reynolds number was decreased. Moreover, the rate of change in entrained flow sharply increases with increase in rotational Reynolds number. As annulus mass flow is reduced to a critical value defined by annulus-to-rotational Reynolds number ratio, the CFD prediction for Cw,ent converges to the turbulent boundary layer entrainment solution for the rotor, and Cw,min reverts to the rotational Reynolds number dominating region. The results from this study were compared to what has been observed by a previous study for a single overlap platform geometry. The resulting design curve allows insight in relating cavity purge flow requirements versus turbine cycle parameters which could lead to better efficiency.
This paper presents a thorough assessment for two of the contemporary CFD programs available for modeling and predicting nonfilm-cooled surface heat transfer distributions on turbine airfoil surfaces. The CFD programs are capable of predicting laminar-turbulent transition and have been evaluated and validated against five test cases with experimental data. The suite of test cases considered for this study consists of two flat plat cases at zero and non-zero pressure gradient and three linear-turbine-cascade test cases that are representative of modern high pressure turbine designs. The flat plate test cases are the ERCOFTAC T3A and T3C2, while the linear turbine cascade cases are the MARKII, the Virginia Polytechnic Institute (VPI), and the Von Karman Institute (VKI) turbine cascades. The numerical tools assessed in this study are 3D viscous Reynolds Averaged-Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations programs that employ a variety of one-equation and two-equation models for turbulence closure. The assessment study focuses on the one-equation Spalart and Allmaras and the two-equation shear stress transport K-ω turbulence models with the ability of modeling and predicting laminar-turbulent transition. The RANS 3D viscous codes are Numeca’s Fine Turbo and ANSYS-CFX’ CFX5. Numerical results for skin friction, surface temperature distribution and heat transfer coefficient from the CFD programs are compared to measured experimental data. Sensitivity of the predictions to free stream turbulence and to inlet turbulence boundary conditions is also presented. The results of the study clearly illustrate the superiority of using the laminar-turbulent transition prediction in improving the accuracy of predicting the heat transfer coefficient on the surfaces of high pressure turbine airfoils.
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