Rotor Blade Sweep Effect on the Performance of a Small Axial Supersonic Impulse Turbine

Abstract

In this paper, a computational study was conducted in order to investigate the rotor blade sweep effect on the aerodynamics of a small axial supersonic impulse turbine stage. For this purpose, three-dimensional unsteady RANS simulations have been performed with three different rotor blade sweep angles (-15°, 0°, +15°) and the results were compared with each other. Both NTG (No tip gap) and WTG (With tip gap) models were applied to examine the effect on tip leakage flow. As a result of the simulation, the positive sweep model (+15°) showed better performance in relative flow angle, Mach number distribution, entropy rise, and tip leakage mass flow rate compared with no sweep model. With the blade static pressure distribution result, the positive sweep model showed that hub and tip loading was increased and midspan loading was reduced compared with no sweep model while the negative sweep model (-15°) showed the opposite result. The positive sweep model also showed a good aerodynamic performance around the hub region compared with other models. Overall, the positive sweep angle enhanced the turbine efficiency.