Volume 32, Issue 1 -

To study the influence of tip clearance on internal flow characteristics and external performance of a prototype centrifugal pump with a semi-open impeller, the unsteady numerical simulation and performance experiments are carried out in this paper. The evolution process of leakage vortex with time t , the flow characteristics and the magnitude of leakage rate in tip clearance are obtained in details. The results indicate that the H-Q curve hump of centrifugal pump shows a weakened trend with the increasing of tip clearance Δ c . Meanwhile, the leakage rate Δ Q and the ratio of leakage rate to discharge flow rate ( ψ ) gradually increase. At the same tip clearance, the leakage rate Δ Q increases, while the ratio of leakage rate to discharge flow rate ( ψ ) decreases with the increasing of discharge flow rate Q . It is found that higher volumetric loss account for a higher percentage of the total loss at small flow rate condition. There easily exist strong leakage vortexes in the impeller inlet, impeller passage and impeller outlet. The pressure difference between suction side and pressure side makes the fluid pass through the tip clearance layer to form a lower pressure region and leakage vortex.

The authors have performed a numerical study to investigate the spray evolution in a modern gas turbine combustor of the Lean Pre-Mixed Pre-vaporized type. The CFD tool is able to simulate the injection conditions, by isolating and studying some specific phenomena. The calculations have been performed by using a 3-D fluid dynamic code, the FLUENT flow solver, by choosing the injection models on the basis of a comparative analysis with some experimental data, in terms of droplet diameters, obtained by PDA technique. In a first phase of the investigation, the numerical simulation refers to non-evaporating flow conditions, in order to validate the estimation of the fundamental spray parameters. Next, the calculations employ boundary conditions close to those occurring in the actual combustor operation, in order to predict the fuel vapour distribution throughout the premixing chamber. The results obtained allow the authors to perform combustion simulation in the whole domain.

This paper focuses on creating a new design method optimizing both aspirated compressor airfoil and the aspiration scheme simultaneously. The optimization design method is based on the artificial bee colony algorithm and the CST method, while the flow field is computed by one 2D computational program. The optimization process of the rotor tip and stator tip airfoil from an aspirated fan stage is demonstrated to verify the effectiveness of the new coupling method. The results show that the total pressure losses of the optimized stator tip and rotor tip airfoil are reduced relatively by 54% and 20%, respectively. Artificial bee colony algorithm and CST method indicate a satisfying applicability in aspirated airfoil optimization design. Finally, the features of aspirated airfoil designing process are concluded.

This paper aims to explain the propagation of different types of inflow distortions through a contra rotating fan stage. Inflow distortions like circumferential, radial and complex distortions were artificially generated using meshes of different porosities. The overall effects of these distortions are determined in the terms of the fan performance map. It is attempted to explain the propagation of inflow distortion using distortion descriptors like circumferential intensity, circumferential extent and radial intensity at the design mass flow rate. These are described for different speed combinations of both the rotors at the inlet, the exit of rotor-1 and at the exit of rotor-2. It is important to observe here that even for purely circumferential inflow distortion, the distortion does not remain purely circumferential, rather it propagates both circumferentially and radially along the stage. For the hub-strong complex inflow distortion, the higher magnitude of circumferential intensity and circumferential extent at the exit of rotor-1 clearly indicates the strong distortion effect that leads to poor performance of the stage amongst all distortion configurations studied. With radial inflow distortion, the radial redistribution of the flow at the exit of rotor-1 plays an important role in the performance of the rotor-2 and thereby for the stage.

In this paper, a method to determine the slip factor of centrifugal impellers is proposed based on the experimental result of the external performance of centrifugal pumps. This proposed method is superior to the conventional experimental method, which needs not to measure the flow parameters at impeller outlet. The results show that the present method can be used to obtain the slip factor at offdesign condition in a wide range of flow rate besides at the design point.

The aim of this study was to develop a nano-hydraulic turbine utilizing drop structure in irrigation channels or industrial waterways. This study was focused on an open-type cross-flow turbine without any attached equipment for cost reduction and easy maintenance. In this study, the authors used an artificial indoor waterfall as lab model. Test runner which is a simple structure of 20 circular arc-shaped blades sandwiched by two circular plates was used The optimum inlet blade angle and the relationship between the power performance and the flow rate approaching theoretically and experimentally were investigated. As a result, the optimum inlet blade angle due to the flow rate was changed. Additionally, allocation rate of power output in 1st stage and 2nd stage is changed by the blade inlet angle.

This paper presents a computational analysis of effects of swirling co-flow and non-circular subsonic compressible inner jets on centerline velocity decay, mass entrainment and jet spreading rate. Three different exit shapes of elliptical, rectangular and circular inner jets were compared for three different co-flow conditions such as no co-flow, straight co-flow and swirling co-flow. Co-flow is issuing from a circular annular duct. Swirling co-flow is created in the co-flow duct by introducing a swirler with stationary angular vanes of 50° oblique to the jet axis. Reynolds number of inner jet is calculated based on its equivalent diameter as 200342. It is found that the swirling co-flow has strong influence on the boundary condition of inner jet and alters the major features of the jet such as jet potential core length, centerline velocity decay rate and jet spread rate. Streamwise corner vortices of different jet conditions have been captured using velocity vector plot to show the effect of swirling co-flow on the jet flow field. Swirling co-flow with elliptical inner jet exhibits higher velocity decay rate and jet spreading rate than the equivalent area circular and rectangular jet.

A highly loaded full-scale annular combustor is studied in the air-flow facility for the effect of operating variables such as compressor discharge velocity and fuel-air ratio on the performance parameters. The combustor is designed to operate at high pressures and high exit temperatures that impose stringent limitations on its performance such as pressure loss, exit temperature profiles and combustion efficiency. The effect of excess air ratio on performance parameters is found to be marginal over the range tested. Increasing the excess air ratio decreases the pressure loss, exit pattern factors and combustion efficiency. The inlet Mach no. is found to influence the pressure loss strongly and exit temperature patterns marginally. Combustion efficiency is found to deteriorate with increase in Mach number. This will in turn affect the integrity and life of hot end components of the aero engine.

Based on nonequilibrium plasma dynamics of air discharge, the dynamic model of two-dimensional plasma is established by combining the plasma dynamic model, chemical reaction equations and Navier-Stokes equations. The discharge process of disk-shape plasma igniter is simulated. The process of discharge stream formation is obtained, which results from by electrons’ movement and aggregation. At t  = 8.65 ns, a completely stable stream is formed. The simulation stream agrees well with the physical fact. The variations of electron density, O-atom and O-ion density are also presented. The variation trend of O-ions is similar to that of the electron density. At the time when the streamer is formed, the average particle density of O-ions reaches up to ∼10 18 m −3 . The number of active particles reaches that for starting the chemical reactions.

An in-line tube fan with design flow rate 1 m 3 /s, static pressure 1030 Pa, rotation speed 3450 rpm, and specific speed 2.1 was investigated. Inverse design method was used to design deswirl vane while CFD to analyze its flow field. Results showed that although the efficiency of the axial straight flat plate is poor, it remained better than that of the vaneless type. The efficiency of deswirl vane was much higher than the previous two. However, when the casing-impeller ratio was lower than 1.25, completely recovering tangential velocity would result in large recirculation flow near outlet of deswirl vane. When the casing-impeller ratio increased to 1.33, the recirculation flow and pressure loss were obviously reduced. When the casing-impeller ratio increased to 1.46, the deswirl vane almost completely recovered tangential velocity, and pressure loss was further reduced. Static pressure and efficiency at operating point were 10% and 6% higher than the casing-impeller ratio 1.33.