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Reducing rotor secondary losses in a turbine stage through endwall airfoil profiling

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Abstract

The rotor blade of an experiment turbine for low Reynolds number flow conditions is recontoured on the hub endwall to reduce the hub’s secondary flow losses. The baseline rotor blade is radially stacked with airfoils of free vortex twisting. The hub section airfoil of the rotor blade is reprofiled for three considerations. The first is to reduce the inlet metal angle to fit with the vane’s exit flow angle near the hub endwall. The second is to reduce the airfoil’s stagger angle to reduce the pitchwise pressure gradient on the hub endwall. The third is to extend the airfoil’s axial chord to a limited distance before the baseline one to build a leading edge fillet. A steady RANS flow computation is carried out to compare the flow fields inside the baseline and the new contoured rotor passages. Flow comparison reveals that the passage vortex intensity is reduced and that the total pressure loss is reduced by 8.9 % in the hub region. The new contoured rotor shows potential application in reducing rotor secondary losses through the stacking of two-dimensional sectional airfoils.

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Abbreviations

C ax :

Axial chord [mm]

c f :

Surface friction coefficient

c p :

Static pressure coefficient

C pt :

Total pressure loss coefficient

H :

Rotor blade height [mm]

P t :

Total pressure [Pa]

x, y, z :

Cascade coordinate directions

Y t :

Total pressure loss coefficient

V 1 :

Inlet velocity before rotor [m/s]

1:

Cascade upstream condition

2:

Cascade downstream condition

z:

Axial coordinate direction

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Acknowledgements

The present work is supported by the National Science Foundation of China under the Project Contract No. 51276116. The first two authors also received financial support from the Shanghai Municipal New Strategic Industry Project: 16DZ112 1202. The authors also thank Dr. Takayuki Matsunuma for providing the detailed configuration and experiment results of the low Reynolds turbine of AIST.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Energy and Power Engineering, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, 516 Jun Gong Road, Shanghai, 200093, China

    Ren Dai, Liu Chen & Haojie Duan

Authors
  1. Ren Dai
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  2. Liu Chen
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  3. Haojie Duan
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ren Dai.

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Recommended by Guest Editor Seung Jin Song

Ren Dai is a Professor and the director of the Turbomachinery Laboratory of the College of Energy and Power Engineering, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, China. He received his Ph.D. in Energy Engineering from East China University of Technology in 1994. His research interests include aerodynamic optimization of axial turbine blades and heat transfer and film cooling technologies over cascade endwall surfaces.

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Dai, R., Chen, L. & Duan, H. Reducing rotor secondary losses in a turbine stage through endwall airfoil profiling. J Mech Sci Technol 34, 4917–4924 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12206-020-2104-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12206-020-2104-1

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