The role of transition in high-lift low-pressure turbines for aeroengines

Abstract

The fan of a high bypass ratio turbo fan engine produces up to 80% of the total thrust of the engine. It is the low-pressure (LP) turbine that drives the fan and, on some engines, a number of compressor stages. The unsteady aerodynamics of the LP turbine, and in particular, the role of unsteady flow in laminar–turbulent transition, is the subject of this paper. The flow in turbomachines is unsteady due to the relative motion of the rows of blades. In the LP turbine, the wakes from the upstream blade rows provide the dominant source of unsteadiness. Because much of the blade-surface boundary-layer flow is laminar, one of the most important consequences of this unsteadiness is the interaction of the wakes with the suction-side boundary layer of a downstream blade. This is important because the blade suction—side boundary layers are responsible for most of the loss of efficiency and because the combined effects of random (wake turbulence) and periodic disturbances (wake velocity defect and pressure fields) cause the otherwise laminar boundary layer to undergo transition and eventually become turbulent. This paper discusses the development of unsteady flows in LP turbines and the process of wake-induced boundary-layer transition in low-pressure turbines and the loss generation that results. Particular emphasis will be placed on unsteady separating flows and how the effects of wakes may be exploited to control loss generation in the laminar–turbulent transition processes. This control has allowed the successful development of the latest generation of ultra-high-lift LP turbines. More recent developments, which harness the effects of surface roughness in conjunction with the wakes, are also presented.