Viscous Analysis of Steam Turbine Rotor Blade Aerodynamics

Abstract

Unsteady load predictions on steam turbine blades are needed for a better understanding of high cycle fatigue blade failures. The forced response due to rotor-stator interaction and the unsteady loads due to blade oscillatory motion are major factors for the cause of stresses. In addition, turbulence, which is generated through the stator nozzle passages of a turbine, significantly affects the flow characteristics and heat transfer of the rotor blades. This paper presents a numerical modeling of turbulence effects of a flow around a rotor blade which was extended to demonstrate unsteady calculations due to blade oscillations. The grids were generated by employing the boundary-fitted algebraic grid generation technique. In the computations, the unsteady compressible Navier-Stokes equations were solved for the simulation of the flows in the above mentioned regions to determine mean velocity components, the turbulence energy levels, pressures, and thermodynamic properties such as temperatures and densities. The computed pressure distributions along a blade were compared with the published experimental data and the code was validated by showing reasonable agreement with the results. Some numerical examples are presented by using different turbulence models to investigate the nature of the turbulence occurring in the flow around a blade. Furthermore, the computational model was tested for its applicability to blade flutter in three vibrational modes — tangential, axial, and twist modes.