Unsteady Aerodynamic Interaction in a Closely-Coupled Turbine Consistent With Contra-Rotation

The focus of the study presented here was to investigate the interaction between the blade and downstream vane of the stage-and-one-half transonic turbine via CFD analysis and experimental data. A Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) flow solver with the two-equation Wilcox 1998 k-ω turbulence model was used as the numerical analysis tool for comparison for all of the experiments conducted. The rigor and fidelity of both the experimental tests and numerical analysis methods were built through two- and three-dimensional steady-state comparisons, leading to three-dimensional time-accurate comparisons. This was accomplished by first testing the midspan and quarter-tip two-dimensional geometries of the blade in a linear transonic cascade. The effects of varying the incidence angle and pressure ratio on the pressure distribution were captured both numerically and experimentally. This was used during the stage-and-one-half post-test analysis to confirm that the target corrected speed and pressure ratio were achieved. Then, in a full annulus facility, the first vane itself was tested in order to characterize the flowfield exiting the vane that would be provided to the blade row during the rotating experiments. Finally, the full stage-and-one-half transonic turbine was tested in the full annulus cascade with a data resolution not seen in any studies to date. A rigorous convergence study was conducted in order to sufficiently model the flow physics of the transonic turbine. The surface pressure traces and the Discrete Fourier Transforms thereof were compared to the numerical analysis. Shock trajectories were tracked through the use of two-point space-time correlation coefficients. Very good agreement was seen when comparing the numerical analysis to the experimental data. The unsteady interaction between the blade and downstream vane was well captured in the numerical analysis.