Uncertainty Quantification Methodologies Applied to the Rotor Tip Clearance Effect in a Twin Scroll Radial Turbine

Abstract

In the last three decades computer simulation tools have achieved wide spread use in the design and analysis of engineering devices. This has shortened the overall product design cycle (physical experiments may be impossible during early design stages) and it has also provided better understanding of the operating behavior of the systems under investigation. As a consequence numerical simulation have led to a reduction of physical prototyping and to lower costs for manufacturing production chains. Despite this success, it remains difficult to provide objective confidence levels in quantitative information derived from numerical predictions. The complexity arises from the amount of uncertainties related to the inputs of any computation attempting to represent a physical system. This paper focuses on geometrical sources of uncertainty in the field of CFD applied to twin scroll radial turbines. In particular it has been investigated the effect of uncertainties on tip clearance values at rotor blade leading edge and trailing edge on selected turbine performance parameters. The analysis shows the use of the Surrogate-based uncertainty quantification technique that has been setup by the authors in the Dakota® environment. The polynomial chaos expansion method has been applied to the same case. The comparison of the results coming from the different approaches and the discussion of the pros and cons related to each technique lead to interesting conclusions, which are proposed as guidelines for future UQ applications on the theme of CFD applied to radial turbines.

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