Flow in a “Cover-Plate” Preswirl Rotor–Stator System

Abstract

This paper describes a combined theoretical, computational, and experimental study of the flow in an adiabatic preswirl rotor–stator system. Preswirl cooling air, supplied through nozzles in the stator, flows radially outward, in the rotating cavity between the rotating disk and a cover-plate attached to it, leaving the system through blade-cooling holes in the disk. An axisymmetric elliptic solver, incorporating the Launder–Sharma low-Reynolds-number k–ε turbulence model, is used to compute the flow. An LDA system is used to measure the tangential component of velocity, Vφ, in the rotating cavity of a purpose-built rotating-disc rig. For rotational Reynolds numbers up to 1.2 × 106 and preswirl ratios up to 2.5, agreement between the computed and measured values of Vφ is mainly very good, and the results confirm that free-vortex flow occurs in most of the rotating cavity. Computed values of the preswirl effectiveness (or the nondimensional temperature difference between the preswirl and blade-cooling air) agree closely with theoretical values obtained from a thermodynamic analysis of an adiabatic system.