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Computational Analysis of the Blade Loading on Tip Clearance Effects

Received: 27 June 2020    Accepted: 26 October 2020    Published: 16 November 2020
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Abstract

Gas turbines normally have the rotating and stationary parts. The rotational blades always need clearance to rotation. Blade tip clearance is one of the important parameters affecting performance, safety and stability of a gas turbine engine. However, it is difficult to measure the tip clearance accurately during the tests. The numerical studies are important methods to study the tip clearance effects. Tip clearance effects have been studied for a long time. However, there are still many aspects that are not fully understood and industries still don’t have a good way to perform design with minimum tip clearance losses. In the gas turbine design, the tip clearance considerations are very critical for both performance and reliability. In this paper, we perform the numerical study on the tip clearance impacts during the aerodynamic design, especially the blade loading through blade counts. The study found that the proper blade loading could reduce the tip clearance sensitivity and reduce the tip clearance losses. In the cases of reasonable number of blades, the effect of clearance on the total pressure loss and efficiency had a linear relationship. But in the cases of small number of blades, the effect of clearance on the total pressure loss and efficiency is no longer linear. The study helped turbine designers to consider blade loading and tip clearance together during the turbine design.

Published in International Journal of Fluid Mechanics & Thermal Sciences (Volume 6, Issue 4)

This article belongs to the Special Issue Fluid Mechanics & Thermal Sciences in Turbomachines

DOI 10.11648/j.ijfmts.20200604.11
Page(s) 95-107
Creative Commons

This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

Copyright

Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

Gas Turbine, Blade Loading, Tip Clearance, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)

References
[1] Futral, SM, Holeski, DE. Effect of rotor tip clearance on the performance of a 5-inch single stage axial flow turbine (TMX-1757). Washington, DC: NASA, 1969.
[2] R. E. Peacock, A review of turbomachinery tip gap effects: Part 2: Rotating machinery, International Journal of Heat & Fluid Flow, 1986, vol. 4, pp. 3–16.
[3] J. Moore, J. G. Moore, G. S. Henry, U. Chaudhry, Flow and heat transfer in turbine tip gaps, Journal of Turbomachinery, 111 (1989) 301–309.
[4] P. J. Newton, G. D. Lock, S. K. Krishnababu, H. P. Hodson, W. N. Dawes, J. Hannis, C. Whitney, Heat transfer and Aerodynamics of turbine blade tips in a linear cascade, Journal of Turbomachinery 128 (2006) 300–309.
[5] C. Bringhenti, J. R. Barbosa, Effects of Turbine Tip Clearance on Gas Turbine Performance, GT2008-50196, pp. 1715-1721.
[6] C. Xu and R. S. Amano, An Implicit scheme for cascade flow and heat transfer analysis, ASME J. of Turbomachinery, April, 2000. https://doi.org/10.1115/1.555447.
[7] Kypuros, JA, Melcher, KJ. A reduced model for prediction of thermal and rotational effects on turbine tip clearance (NASA/TM-2003-212226). Washington, DC: NASA, 2003.
[8] C. Xu and R. S. Amano, A hybrid numerical procedure for cascade flow analysis, Numerical Heat Transfer, Vol., 37, No. 2. p. 141-164, March, 2000. https://doi.org/10.1080/104077900275468.
[9] S. W. Lee, H. S. Moon, S. E. Lee, Tip gap height effects on flow structure and heat/mass transfer over plane tip of a high-turning turbine rotor blade, International Journal of Heat and Fluid Flow 30 (2009) 198–210.
[10] G. S. Azad, J. Han, S. Teng, R. J. Boyle, Heat transfer and pressure distributions on a gas turbine blade tip, Journal of Turbomachinery 122 (2000) 717–724.
[11] G. S. Azad, J. Han, R. J. Boyle, Heat transfer and flow on the squealer tip of a gas turbine blade, Journal of Turbomachinery 122 (2000) 725–732.
[12] C. Xu and R. S. Amano, Flux-splitting finite volume method for turbine and heat transfer analysis, Computational Mechanics, April, 2001. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s004660000219.
[13] D. Yongle S. Baowei and W. Peng, Numerical investigation of tip clearance effects on the performance of ducted propeller, International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering, Volume 7, Issue 5, September 2015, Pages 795-804.
[14] Booth T., Importance of tip clearance flows in turbine design, VKI lecture series, 1985-05: tip clearance effects in axial turbomachines, Von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics., Belgium (1985).
[15] Yaras and Sjolander, M. Yaras, Sjolander S., Effects of simulated rotation on tip leakage in a planar cascade of turbine blades: part I-tip gap flow, Journal of turbomachinery, 114 (3) (1992), pp. 652-659.
[16] You D., Wang M., P. Moin, Mittal R., Effects of tip-gap size on the tip-leakage flow in a turbomachinery cascade, Physics of Fluids (1994-present), 18 (2006), p. 105102.
[17] V. Shyam, A. Ameri, J.-P. Chen, Analysis of unsteady tip and endwall heat transfer in a highly loaded transonic, turbine stage, Tech. Rep. TM-2010-216740, NASA (2010).
[18] C. Xu and R. S. Amano, Computational Analysis of Pitch-Width Effects on the Secondary Flows of Turbine Blades, Computational Mechanics, Vol. 34, No. 2, pp. 111-120, 2004.
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  • APA Style

    Limin Wang, Yadong Liu, Chengqin Li. (2020). Computational Analysis of the Blade Loading on Tip Clearance Effects. International Journal of Fluid Mechanics & Thermal Sciences, 6(4), 95-107. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijfmts.20200604.11

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    ACS Style

    Limin Wang; Yadong Liu; Chengqin Li. Computational Analysis of the Blade Loading on Tip Clearance Effects. Int. J. Fluid Mech. Therm. Sci. 2020, 6(4), 95-107. doi: 10.11648/j.ijfmts.20200604.11

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    AMA Style

    Limin Wang, Yadong Liu, Chengqin Li. Computational Analysis of the Blade Loading on Tip Clearance Effects. Int J Fluid Mech Therm Sci. 2020;6(4):95-107. doi: 10.11648/j.ijfmts.20200604.11

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  • @article{10.11648/j.ijfmts.20200604.11,
      author = {Limin Wang and Yadong Liu and Chengqin Li},
      title = {Computational Analysis of the Blade Loading on Tip Clearance Effects},
      journal = {International Journal of Fluid Mechanics & Thermal Sciences},
      volume = {6},
      number = {4},
      pages = {95-107},
      doi = {10.11648/j.ijfmts.20200604.11},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijfmts.20200604.11},
      eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ijfmts.20200604.11},
      abstract = {Gas turbines normally have the rotating and stationary parts. The rotational blades always need clearance to rotation. Blade tip clearance is one of the important parameters affecting performance, safety and stability of a gas turbine engine. However, it is difficult to measure the tip clearance accurately during the tests. The numerical studies are important methods to study the tip clearance effects. Tip clearance effects have been studied for a long time. However, there are still many aspects that are not fully understood and industries still don’t have a good way to perform design with minimum tip clearance losses. In the gas turbine design, the tip clearance considerations are very critical for both performance and reliability. In this paper, we perform the numerical study on the tip clearance impacts during the aerodynamic design, especially the blade loading through blade counts. The study found that the proper blade loading could reduce the tip clearance sensitivity and reduce the tip clearance losses. In the cases of reasonable number of blades, the effect of clearance on the total pressure loss and efficiency had a linear relationship. But in the cases of small number of blades, the effect of clearance on the total pressure loss and efficiency is no longer linear. The study helped turbine designers to consider blade loading and tip clearance together during the turbine design.},
     year = {2020}
    }
    

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  • TY  - JOUR
    T1  - Computational Analysis of the Blade Loading on Tip Clearance Effects
    AU  - Limin Wang
    AU  - Yadong Liu
    AU  - Chengqin Li
    Y1  - 2020/11/16
    PY  - 2020
    N1  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijfmts.20200604.11
    DO  - 10.11648/j.ijfmts.20200604.11
    T2  - International Journal of Fluid Mechanics & Thermal Sciences
    JF  - International Journal of Fluid Mechanics & Thermal Sciences
    JO  - International Journal of Fluid Mechanics & Thermal Sciences
    SP  - 95
    EP  - 107
    PB  - Science Publishing Group
    SN  - 2469-8113
    UR  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijfmts.20200604.11
    AB  - Gas turbines normally have the rotating and stationary parts. The rotational blades always need clearance to rotation. Blade tip clearance is one of the important parameters affecting performance, safety and stability of a gas turbine engine. However, it is difficult to measure the tip clearance accurately during the tests. The numerical studies are important methods to study the tip clearance effects. Tip clearance effects have been studied for a long time. However, there are still many aspects that are not fully understood and industries still don’t have a good way to perform design with minimum tip clearance losses. In the gas turbine design, the tip clearance considerations are very critical for both performance and reliability. In this paper, we perform the numerical study on the tip clearance impacts during the aerodynamic design, especially the blade loading through blade counts. The study found that the proper blade loading could reduce the tip clearance sensitivity and reduce the tip clearance losses. In the cases of reasonable number of blades, the effect of clearance on the total pressure loss and efficiency had a linear relationship. But in the cases of small number of blades, the effect of clearance on the total pressure loss and efficiency is no longer linear. The study helped turbine designers to consider blade loading and tip clearance together during the turbine design.
    VL  - 6
    IS  - 4
    ER  - 

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Author Information
  • ENN Energy Power Technology Co., Ltd., Shanghai, China

  • ENN Energy Power Technology Co., Ltd., Shanghai, China

  • ENN Energy Power Technology Co., Ltd., Shanghai, China

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