Study of Two-Phase Flow Downstream of a Gas Turbine Combustor Dome Swirl Cup

Abstract

The two-phase axisymmetric flowfield downstream of the swirl cup of an advanced gas turbine combustor is studied numerically. The swirl cup analyzed is that of a single annular GE/SNECMA CFM56 turbofan engine that is comprised of a pair of coaxial counter-swirling air streams together with a fuel atomizer. The atomized fuel mixes with the swirling air stream resulting in the establishment of a complex two-phase flowfield within the swirl chamber. The analysis procedure involves the solution of the gas phase equations in a Eulerian frame of reference. The flow is assumed to be nonreacting and isothermal. The liquid phase is simulated by using a droplet spray model and by treating the motion of the fuel droplets in a Lagrangian frame of reference. Extensive Phase Doppler Particle Analyzer (PDPA) data for the CFM56 engine swirl cup has been obtained at atmospheric pressure by using water as the fuel (Wang et al., 1992a). This includes measurements of the gas phase velocity in the absence and presence of the spray together with the droplet size, droplet number count and droplet velocity distribution information at various axial stations downstream of the injector. Numerical calculations were performed under the exact inlet and boundary conditions as the experimental measurements. The computed gas phase velocity field showed good agreement with the test data. The agreement was found to be best at the stations close to the primary venturi of the swirler and to be reasonable at later stations. To compare the droplet data, a numerical PDPA scheme was formulated whereby several sampling volumes were selected within the computational domain. The trajectories of various droplets passing through these volumes were monitored and appropriately integrated. The calculated droplet count and mean droplet velocity distributions were compared with the measurements and showed very good agreement in the case of larger size droplets and fair agreement for smaller size droplets.