Influence of non-uniform inflow swirl and hot streak on turbine vane

Abstract

The turbine vane bears higher and higher temperature of upstream flow with the higher requirements for the engine thrust. The heat resistance of turbine vanes is a severe problem for the lifetime of turbine vanes. Therefore, it is essential to study the flow field and heat transfer of the vane to find better ways to improve the heat resistance of the turbine and increase the thrust of the engine. To improve the efficiency of the turbine vanes, the present paper conducted researches on the heat transfer and the pressure loss of turbine vanes under different radius ratio of swirl and hot streak. The numerical applies CFD 3D RANs solver with the SST turbulent model to get the influence of non-uniform inflow velocity and temperature distribution on turbine vanes. The present numerical model utilizes turbine vane C3X. Considering the viscosity of the fluid causes shear stress on the wall, the paper set the boundary layers mesh in the numerical model. The size of the first boundary layer mesh is 10–6 m. The results show that the hot fluid on the suction side migrates towards the hub, and the hot fluid on the pressure side migrates towards the shroud while there are coupling effect of the swirl and hot streak. The larger the radius ratio of the hot streak and the swirl (RHS) is, the higher the temperature of the local high-temperature regions exist on the suction side of leading edge and the pressure side of the trailing edge is, and the higher the pressure loss is.