Hot Streak Migration Research Articles

Deterministic Stress Modeling of Hot Gas Segregation in a Turbine

Simulation of unsteady viscous turbomachinery flowfields is presently impractical as a design tool due to the long run times required. Designers rely predominantly on steady-state simulations, but these simulations do not account for some of the important unsteady flow physics. Unsteady flow effects can be modeled as source terms in the steady flow equations. These source terms, referred to as Lumped Deterministic Stresses (LDS), can be used to drive steady flow solution procedures to reproduce the time-average of an unsteady flow solution. The goal of this work is to investigate the feasibility of using inviscid lumped deterministic stresses to model unsteady combustion hot streak migration effects on the turbine blade tip and outer air seal heat loads. The LDS model is obtained from an unsteady inviscid calculation. The inviscid LDS model is then used with a steady viscous computation to simulate the time-averaged viscous solution. The feasibility of the inviscid LDS model is demonstrated on a single-stage, three-dimensional, vane-blade turbine with a hot streak entering the vane passage at midpitch and midspan. The steady viscous solution with the LDS model is compared to the time-averaged viscous, steady viscous, and time-averaged inviscid computations. The LDS model reproduces the time-averaged viscous temperature distribution on the outer air seal to within 2.3 percent, while the steady viscous has an error of 8.4 percent, and the time-averaged inviscid calculation has an error of 17.2 percent. The solution using the LDS model is obtained at a cost in CPU time that is 26 percent of that required for a time-averaged viscous computation. [S0889-504X(00)00601-2]

Numerical Analysis of Three-Dimensional Unsteady Hot Streak Migration and Shock Interaction in a Turbine Stage

A three-dimensional unsteady flow computation has been performed for a transonic first turbine stage under the influence of streaks of hot gas exiting the combustion chamber. Realistic flow conditions are obtained by using an unequal stator-to-rotor pitch, a single-streak/multistator channel configuration, and periodic boundary conditions. The resulting unsteady shock wave system and the hot streak migration as well as the shock wave/streak interaction are presented and discussed. In addition, the time average of the periodic unsteady solution is analyzed and compared with a steady-state computation. The steady-state solution is analyzed and compared with a steady-state computation. The steady-state solution matches the time-averaged one in terms of the pressure field and the maximum stagnation temperature on the rotor blade surface. However, the rotor blade temperature patterns are different with a stronger radial secondary flow present in the time-averaged solution due to the retention of the circumferential streak variations at the stator/rotor interface.

Unsteady analysis of hot streak migration in a turbine stage

Two- and three-dimensional Navier-Stokes analyses are used to predict unsteady viscous rotor-stator interacting flow in the presence of a combustor hot streak. Predicted results are presented for a two-dimensional three-stator/four-rotor, a two-dimensional one-stator/one-rotor, and a three-dimensional one-stator/one-rotor simulation of hot streak migration through a turbine stage. Comparison of these results with experimental data demonstrates the capability of the three-dimensional procedure to capture most of the flow physics associated with hot streak migration including the effects of combustor hot streaks on turbine rotor surface temperatures. It is noted that blade count ratio has little effect on predicted time-averaged surface pressure and temperature distributions, but a substantial effect on the unsteady flow characteristics. It is shown that high-temperature hot streak fluid accumulates on the pressure surface of the rotor blades, resulting in a high time-averaged surface temperature 'hot spots'.