Forced Response Analysis of Supercritical CO2 Radial Inflow Turbine Designed for Concentrating Solar Power

Abstract

The forced response of high-pressure sCO2 radial-inflow turbine blisk is studied with regards to internal mistuning and inherent characteristics of supercritical Brayton cycle. A novel preliminary meanline analysis led to the generation of turbine designs for the sCO2 Brayton cycle with respect to concentrating solar power (CSP) applications. Details of mentioned study are published in a separate paper. The sCO2 turbine with a pressure ratio of 2.2 and the mild inlet temperature of 560 C is studied for rotational speed ranging between 75000 and 125000 RPM. Aiming to achieve an enhanced understanding of the fluid-structure-interaction in sCO2 radial-inflow turbine, a numerical method capable of predicting the forced responses of tuned and intentionally mistuned blisks due to aerodynamic excitation is presented. The numerical work involves the simulation of the transient flow field, and then the unsteady aerodynamic excitation forces on the blades are determined by modelling various resonance condition, including the influence of the operating condition and stator number. Performing the forced response of the structure, the transient and spatially resolved pressure distribution is used as a boundary condition in an FE model. As a result, the response amplifications of sCO2 turbines are eventually compared. The similar geometrical turbine was designed and manufactured to be operated in subcritical state for the sake of validation. The results of the subcritical turbine are derived by means of experimental and numerical analyses. To update the effect of mistuning in the FE model, blade by blade measurements using the example of a subcritical turbine blisk is performed and results of well correlated FRFs are used as inputs to adjust the blade individual Young’s modulus. The tendency of results is approved by previous works done in subcritical state. The structural damping information to be considered in the update process is taken from results of an experimental modal analysis and the aerodynamic damping induced by blade vibration is computed using an energy balance technique. It has been found that increase of the maximum forced response beyond that of the sCO2 turbine with higher rotational speed is not significant due to the existence of high pressure-density sCO2. This implies an occurrence of high aerodynamic damping which would cause a low vibrational amplitude in case of a mistuned blisk. Considering aeroelastic coupling, in supercritical turbine with small mistuning, no change of maximum response magnitudes is achieved for the fundamental bending mode; however, with large mistuning pattern, aerodynamic damping can cause significantly better response level. This result indicates considerable contrast with responses obtained from subcritical model which would be expressed by either characteristic or state of working fluid.