Volume 32, Issue 2 -

Lean blow out characteristics in a swirl stabilized aero gas turbine combustor have been studied using computational fluid dynamics. For CFD analysis, a 22.5° sector of an annular combustor is modeled using unstructured tetrahedral meshes comprising 1.2 × 10 6 elements. The governing equations are solved using the eddy dissipation combustion model in CFX. The primary combustion zone is analyzed by considering it as a well stirred reactor. The analysis has been carried out for different operating conditions of the reactants entering into the control volume. The results are treated as the base-line or reference values. Combustion lean blow-out limits are further characterized studying the behavior of combustion zone during transient engine operation. The validity of the computational study has been established by experimental study on a full-scale annular combustor in an air flow test facility that is capable of simulating different conditions at combustor inlet. The experimental result is in a good agreement with the analytical predictions. Upon increasing the combustor mass flow, the lean blow out limit increases, i.e., the blow out occurs at higher fuel-air ratios. In addition, when the operating pressure decreases, the lean blow out limit increases, i.e., blow out occurs at higher fuel-air ratios.

Combustion stability is examined in a swirl stabilized aero gas turbine combustor using computational fluid dynamics. A 22.5° sector of an annular combustor is modeled for the study. Unstructured tetrahedral meshes comprising 1.2 × 10 6 elements are employed in the model where the governing equations are solved using CFD flow solver CFX using eddy dissipation combustion model. The effect of fuel particle size on the combustion and its stability has been studied at steady state and transient conditions. The time for complete evaporation is increased exponentially when drop size increases. It delays heating up the mixture and subsequent ignition. This strongly affects the stability of the combustion flame as the incoming fresh mixture will have a quenching effect on the existing temperature field. Transient analysis at low fuel-air ratio and high particle size shows that there is a series of flame extinction and re-ignition prior to complete extinction which is observed from the fluctuation of gas temperature in the primary zone.

Multi-objective optimization of a centrifugal fan with additionally installed splitter blades was performed to simultaneously maximize the efficiency and pressure rise using three-dimensional Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations and hybrid multi-objective evolutionary algorithm. Two design variables defining the location of splitter, and the height ratio between inlet and outlet of impeller were selected for the optimization. In addition, the aerodynamic characteristics of the centrifugal fan were investigated with the variation of design variables in the design space. Latin hypercube sampling was used to select the training points, and response surface approximation models were constructed as surrogate models of the objective functions. With the optimization, both the efficiency and pressure rise of the centrifugal fan with splitter blades were improved considerably compared to the reference model.

Experimental research has been carried out at low speed to investigate the effect of additional leading-edge surface roughness on a highly-loaded axial compressor cascade. A 5-hole aerodynamic probe has been traversed across one pitch to obtain the distribution of total pressure loss coefficient, secondary flow vector, flow angles and other aerodynamic parameters at the exit section. Meanwhile, ink-trace flow visualization has been used to measure the flow fields on the walls of cascades and a detailed topology structure of the flow on the walls has been obtained. Aerodynamic parameters and flow characteristics are compared by arranging different levels of roughness on various parts of the leading edge. The results show that adding surface roughness at the leading edge and on the suction side obviously influences cascade performance. Aggravated 3-D flow separation significantly increases the loss in cascades, and the loss increases till 60% when the level of emery paper is 80 mm. Even there is the potential to improve cascade performance in local area of cascade passage. The influence of the length of surface roughness on cascade performance is not always adverse, and which depends on the position of surface roughness.

Test device using virtual engine simulator can help reduce the number of engine tests through tests similar to the actual engine tests and repeat the test under the same condition, and thus reduce the engine maintenance and operating costs [1]. Also, as it is possible to easily implement extreme conditions in which it is hard to conduct actual tests, it can prevent engine damages that may happen during the actual engine test under such conditions. In this study, an upgraded MGET test device was developed that can conduct both real and virtual engine test by applying real-time engine model to the existing MGET test device that was developed and has been sold by the Company. This newly developed multi-purpose MGET test device is expected to be used for various educational and research purposes.

Efficiency of gas turbine monitoring systems primarily depends on the accuracy of employed algorithms, in particular, pattern classification techniques for diagnosing gas path faults. In recent investigations many techniques have been applied to classify gas path faults, but recommendations for selecting the best technique for real monitoring systems are still insufficient and often contradictory. In our previous work, three classification techniques were compared under different conditions of gas turbine diagnosis. The comparative analysis has shown that all these techniques yield practically the same accuracy for each comparison case. The present contribution considers a new classification technique, Probabilistic Neural Network (PNN), and we compare it with the techniques previously examined. The results for all comparison cases show that the PNN is not inferior to the other techniques. We recommend choosing the PNN for real monitoring systems because it has an important advantage of providing confidence estimation for every diagnostic decision made.

The rotor systems of an aero engine will endure additional centrifugal force and gyroscopic moment during maneuver flight. A maneuver fly mechanical simulator is designed and experimental investigations on dynamics of squeeze film damper (SFD) under the different additional centrifugal force and gyroscopic moment are carried out. The results show that the maneuver flight weaken effectiveness of the SFD, the additional centrifugal force and gyroscopic moment caused by maneuver flight will change film damping, film stiffness. And the influence of maneuver flight can be effective relieved by increasing the film clearance.

This paper develops a continuous adjoint formulation for the aerodynamic shape design of a turbine in a multi-stage environment based on S 2 surface governed by the Euler equations with source terms. First, given the general expression of the objective function, the adjoint equations and their boundary conditions are derived by introducing the adjoint variable vectors. Then, the final expression of the objective function gradient only includes the terms pertinent to the physical shape variations. The adjoint system is solved numerically by a finite-difference method with the Jameson spatial scheme employing first and third order dissipative flux and the time-marching is conducted by Runge-Kutta time method. Integrating the blade stagger angles, stacking lines and passage perturbation parameterization with the Quasi-Newton method of BFGS, a gradient-based aerodynamic optimization design system is constructed. Finally, the application of the adjoint method is validated through the blade and passage optimization of a 2-stage turbine with an objective function of entropy generation. The efficiency increased by 0.37% with the deviations of the mass flow rate and the pressure ratio within 1% via the optimization, which demonstrates the capability of the gradient-based system for turbine aerodynamic design.

An indirect thrust measurement method based on impulse of a target plate was developed, and a new thrust measurement system (TMS) was successfully designed and constructed. A series of multi-cycle experiments on thrust measurement were conducted to investigate the feasibility of this method with the newly-built indirect TMS. The thrust measurement of PDE was made at different plate target axial positions and operating frequencies. All the experiments were conducted using gasoline as fuel and air as oxidant. The experimental results implied that the thrust of PDE by using the indirect impulse method was a function of the target plate axial position, and there existed an optimum measurement position for PDE with a diameter of 60 mm. The optimum target plate position located at 3.33. According to the experimental results, the thrusts obtained by using indirect TMS were less than the actual values, and so the observed value of thrust was modified in order to make the thrust more reliable. A relative accurate calibration formula depending on the operating frequency was found.

In the simulation of engine-propeller integrated control system for a turboprop aircraft, a real-time propeller model with high-accuracy is required. A study is conducted to compare the real-time and precision performance of propeller models based on strip theory and lifting surface theory. The emphasis in modeling by strip theory is focused on three points as follows: First, FLUENT is adopted to calculate the lift and drag coefficients of the propeller. Next, a method to calculate the induced velocity which occurs in the ground rig test is presented. Finally, an approximate method is proposed to obtain the downwash angle of the propeller when the conventional algorithm has no solution. An advanced approximation of the velocities induced by helical horseshoe vortices is applied in the model based on lifting surface theory. This approximate method will reduce computing time and remain good accuracy. Comparison between the two modeling techniques shows that the model based on strip theory which owns more advantage on both real-time and high-accuracy can meet the requirement.