Influence of Combustor Flow With Swirl on Integrated Combustor Vane Concept Full-Stage Performance

Abstract

The integrated combustor vane concept for power generation gas turbines with can combustors has been shown to have significant benefits compared to conventional nozzle guide vanes. Aerodynamic loss, heat transfer levels and cooling requirements are reduced while stage efficiency is improved by approximately 1.5% (for a no-swirl scenario). Engine realistic combustor flow with swirl however leads to increased turning non-uniformity downstream of the integrated vanes. This paper thus illustrates the altered integrated vane stage performance caused by inlet swirl. The study shows a distinct performance penalty for the integrated vane rotor as a result of increased rotor incidence and the rotor’s interaction with the residual swirl core. The stage efficiency advantage of the integrated combustor vane concept compared to the conventional design is thus reduced to 0.7%. It is furthermore illustrated how integrated vane profiling is suitable to reduce the turning variation across the span downstream of the vane, further improve stage efficiency (in this case by 0.23%) and thus mitigate the distinct impact of inlet swirl on integrated vane stage performance.

Influence of Swirl Clocking on the Performance of Turbine Stage with Three-Dimensional Nozzle Guide Vane

“…bomachinery research. Comprehensive results from experiments and CFD a enhance the understanding of the root cause [3][4][5][6][7][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29]. Furthermor optimization approach is being applied to offer more complicated control rameters [8,16,30].…”

“…The solid black line represents the loss distribution of the baseline model without inlet swirl. Energies 2021, 14 The present study also aims to understand the influence of 3D NGV and swirl clocking on stage performance. Hence, the computational domain includes 1.5 stages of the turbine.…”

“…It has been reported that the straight lean and compound lean can reorganize the vortices and reduce the secondary flow loss. As a result, the secondary flow loss decreased remarkably by using appropriate leaned blades [12][13][14][15][16]. The sweep commonly occurred because the meridional passage of the main annulus is not typically at a constant radius, whereas the NGV is stacked on a near radial line in the meridional views.…”

“…It has been almost twenty years since the advanced computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and experimental approach have been brought into turbomachinery research. Comprehensive results from experiments and CFD are reported to enhance the understanding of the root cause [3][4][5][6][7][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29]. Furthermore, the design optimization approach is being applied to offer more complicated control of design parameters [8,16,30].…”