Numerical studies of the air humidity and pollution importance in the flow through the gas turbine’s rotor compressor

Abstract

One of the most popular working fluids in turbomachinery is atmospheric air. If the air has not been dried and cleaned before entering the turbomachine, it always contains a certain amount of water in form of water vapour or droplets and suspended solid particles. The paper presents a numerical model of the transonic condensing flow in a turbomachinery application. The presented model of homogeneous and heterogeneous condensation is validated against experimental data available in the literature, i.e. NASA rotor37. The impact of condensation on the compression process in transonic flow through compressor rotor blade-to-blade channel is shown. The latent heat released during the condensation and absorbed during the evaporation process depends on the inlet total parameters of the flow, its relative humidity, liquid water content, and pollution. In this paper the impact of the number of solid particles and water droplets on the compression process in the rotor is investigated. The paper shows that the impact of the condensation is significant and should be taken under consideration in high-velocity air flow simulations.