The Experimental Investigation of the Internal Support Effects on Exhaust Casing Pressure Recovery

Abstract

As is well known, the performance of the last stage of the low pressure part of a steam turbine is strongly influenced by the effectivity of the downstream exhaust casing. The efficiency of the exhaust hood depends on many structural factors such as the design of the diffuser parts, dimensions of the outer casing or arrangement of internal supports. The aim of this paper is the experimental study of the influence of the internal supports of the axial-radial exhaust hood on its pressure recovery factor. For one geometry of its diffuser parts a few different variations of internal supports such as T-rib, tube grid or BV were tested. The effect of reducing the width of exhaust hood in the horizontal joint and the changing of axial length of the diffuser were observed. The width of exhaust hood in horizontal joint and the axial length of the diffuser define the area in the horizontal joint of the exhaust hood. How the diffuser behaves when reducing this area is very important in retrofitting of old machines, where there are so many geometric constrains. The effect of wall jet blowing into the diffuser wall was also evaluated. In this paper we concentrate to examine the sensitivity of these certain geometrical parameters of exhaust hood on the pressure recovery of the whole exhaust system of the low pressure part of the steam turbine. The main purpose of our analysis and experimental measuring was optimising the axial-radial exhaust hood of the steam turbine. For this reason, wind tunnel facilities with relevant measuring and traversing systems were designed and built. The measurements have been performed on 1/5th scale test rig which enabled rapid and efficient evaluation of multiple geometrical variants. The observed exhaust hood was designed for an extra long 54inch last stage blade. For measurements of flow parameters was used multi-hole pneumatic pressure probes and wall pressure taps in conjunction with CFD tools to explore physics based alterations to the exhaust configuration.