In this paper, a novel airfoil design method is proposed by introducing multiple physical characteristics to the process of parameterization. The new design method is to operate the camber and thickness distributions in a way that the chordwise mapping information is adjusted without using local geometrical parameters. A proper design space is expected to be constructed, in which the laws of optimization can be simply transmitted from a single airfoil to the whole blade and even stages. The capability of the method is firstly validated in the Pareto optimization of a 2D compressor airfoil, and then specialized for the optimization of a rotor in a 3-stage transonic compressor. The 3-stage transonic compressor studied in this paper is representative of the inlet stages of an industrial gas turbine, and the shock structure of the third rotor (R3) presents the peak strength near the mid span. The optimized design reduces the peak Mach number on the suction surface, and increases the efficiency of the third stage and the whole compressor by nearly 1% and 0.3% respectively. The mechanism of the loss optimization is analyzed in detail.

A simplified configuration of variable stator vanes, which has a uniform hub clearance and a stationary hub surface, is applied to a high-loaded multistage compressor. Comparisons of endwall flow structures are made between the ideal and the simplified configurations. After validating numerical results of the ideal stator configuration with experiment data, the third stator and all stators are modified with the simplified configuration in two separate cases. Flow structures and loss characteristics in the endwall region are investigated numerically in detail at design point. Limited corner separation near the suction side and comparatively strong secondary flow near the pressure side make similar contributions to endwall loss at design point for the baseline configuration, while the shear flow of the blade tip and the endwall boundary layer are regarded as important sources of loss for the modified configuration.

The supercritical CO 2 (S-CO 2 ) and transcritical CO 2 (T-CO 2 ) combined cycle is a promising technology for the waste heat recovery of the offshore gas turbine. In this paper, a new system layout is proposed to investigate the thermodynamic and economic performances improvement of the S-CO 2 -T-CO 2 combined cycle. Compared to the original systems, the residual heat of the topping S-CO 2 cycle is recovered and extra recuperation is added to the bottoming T-CO 2 cycle. Sensitivity analysis of different systems is carried out based on the mathematical model and multi-objective optimization is conducted. The net power out and the net present value (NPV) are chosen as the objective functions of thermodynamic and economic aspects. The results reveal that at the design point, the improved system has more than 8.23% increment on the net power output and 3.55% increment on the NPV. Besides, the optimized net power output of the improved system attains at least 5.16% increment with 3.15% increment for the optimized NPV at the same time. The improved system can be applied in some practical cases from both the thermodynamic and economic views.

Owing to their low cost and reduced power losses, floating bush bearings are extensively used in high-speed rotors. The advantages are mainly the result of the rotation of the bush. When shaft speed is within a low speed range, bush rotation speed increases linearly with shaft speed. However, the bush-to-shaft speed ratio decreases sharply when the shaft speed reaches a certain range. The mechanism of this phenomenon is not completely clear yet, and a precise prediction method has not been established. The traditional theoretical model predicts that the speed ratio remains constant even when the shaft speed reaches the certain range. Some researchers have attempted to improve the prediction model by considering thermal effect on the assumption that a temperature increase decreases the viscosity of the inner oil film and consequently reduces the speed ratio. However, temperature rise alone is insufficient to induce that much drop of speed ratio. This paper focuses on the effect of air invasion flow in the inner oil film from the axial ends and evaluates the importance of air invasion and thermal effects. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling is adopted in this study because of its capacity to handle complicated calculation domain and calculate air-oil two-phase flow. Three series of CFD simulations with different models are conducted. These models consider the thermal effect (thermal model), the air invasion effect (air model), and the combination of the thermal and air invasion effects (hybrid model). CFD results of the different models are compared to weigh the importance of each effect. The CFD calculation indicates that a substantial amount of air invades the inner oil film when the shaft speed reaches a certain range. Speed ratio drop is not caused by a single factor, but it is the result of the combination of the air invasion and thermal effects. Air invasion, which researchers previously ignored, plays a greater role than the thermal effect.

With the development of high speed rotating machinery, the flow regime in bearings changes from laminar to superlaminar, that is, the flow is between laminar and fully developed turbulent. The superlaminar oil flow in an oil–lubricated tilting–pad journal bearing is analyzed in this study. A three–dimensional model for the oil domain is established and the CFD results obtained using laminar and seventeen turbulence models are compared with the experimental results obtained by S.Taniguchi. The seventeen turbulence models are divided into three groups, namely, classical fully developed turbulence models, transition turbulence models, and turbulence models with low–Re correction. The laminar and classical turbulence models cannot simulate the superlaminar flow correctly; accordingly, corrections should be applied to classical fully developed turbulence models for superlaminar flows to consider the turbulent effect properly. However, not all corrections are suitable. Among all the compared turbulence models, the SST model with low–Re correction performs the best. Furthermore, this model can capture the turbulent effect in superlaminar oil flow, as indicated in the analysis of turbulent viscosity ratio. A comparison of the velocity profiles shows that the mechanism of the superlaminar flow in journal bearings is near–wall turbulence. The buffer layer plays an important role in superlaminar flows. The SST model with low–Re correction can likewise capture the characteristics of the buffer layer and simulate the near–wall turbulence properly in superlaminar flows. Thus in superlaminar journal bearings, the low–Re correction is the most suitable correction for the SST turbulence model for simulating oil flows.

The aero-thermal coupled phenomenon is significant in the modern cooled turbine, and it is necessary to consider the cooling effect in the throughflow design phase. A new cooling model based on flow network analysis for the aero-thermal coupled throughflow method was developed to consider the film cooling effect and predict the blade wall temperature downstream of the film cooling holes. The flow network analysis is introduced into the cooling model to determine the flow rate of each cooling hole. The mixing loss caused by film cooling is investigated as local total pressure loss, and the heat transfer influence caused by film cooling is considered by the film cooling effectiveness estimated by empirical correlation. The blade heat transfer downstream the film cooling holes is calculated from pressure and suction surfaces separately, based on main flow parameters calculated by the streamline curvature method. The experimental data of the C3X profile is selected for the cooling model verification. The film cooling flow rate calculated by the flow network analysis agrees well with the experimental data, and the calculated temperatures of both the pressure and suction surfaces downstream the film cooling holes are also in accordance with the experimental data. Therefore, aero-thermal coupled throughflow method with this cooling model can be a powerful tool for preliminary design of cooled turbine.

Cooling technologies have been widely applied to protect the turbine blades at high inlet temperature, which also makes the aero-thermal coupled phenomenon more remarkable. Nevertheless, the aero-thermal phenomenon had not been considered in traditional throughflow methods and led to challenges of cooled turbine design. This paper proposes a new cooling model for the aero-thermal coupled throughflow method which was first proposed by the same author. The cooling model considers the variation of the temperature caused by air cooling both along the stream and span direction to improve the heat flux calculation accuracy. The impacts of heat transfer on mainstream enthalpy and entropy are further studied in this paper. The equivalent blade thickness and the estimation method of the heat exchange area were also introduced into the cooling model. The cooling model is validated with experimental data of the Mark II profile. This paper applies the method in the design of a high-pressure axial turbine, of which the first stator is cooled with convective cooling. With the prescribed blade temperature limitation, the flow field properties and the coolant requirement are predicted. The three dimensional CHT analysis is performed to validate the aerothermal coupled throughflow method, and the aerodynamic parameter predicted by the throughflow method is in accordance with the 3-D CHT analysis.

Two applications of the non-linear eddy-viscosity model EARSM are presented in the simulations of transonic turbulent flow involving shock waves and other related complex features. The simulations are implemented applying an in-house CFD program based on the unstructured discontinuous Galerkin method, an alternative discretization method of the classical finite volume one to precisely capture the flow features. A series of turbulence feature variables in boundary layers are comparatively observed and analyzed. For the first case of transonic flow over a bump, the redistribution effect of Reynolds stress components rooted in the non-linear constitution relation promotes streamwise turbulence fluctuation and suppresses the normal one in boundary layer, comparing with the traditional linear constitution relation, especially when passing the shocks. The production magnitudes of the turbulence shear stress and kinetic energy for the non-linear model show slightly more sensitive to perturbations, such as the occurrence of shock front or compression corner, than the linear one. For the second case of a transonic turbine vane, similar redistribution effect of the non-linear model is also verified on suction surface around the strong shock. The straightforward redistribution effect is absent on pressure surface around middle part of the vane with favorable pressure gradients. There the non-linear model evaluates higher magnitudes of streamwise, normal and shear Reynolds stress components than the linear one, thus resulting locally stronger heat convection and higher surface temperature.

A framework for the simulations of conjugate heat transfer (CHT) problems using discontinuous Galerkin (DG) methods on unstructured grids is presented. The compressible fluid dynamic equations and solid heat conduction equations are discretized into the explicit DG formulations simultaneously. The Bassi-Rebay method is used in the gradients computation inside both fluid and solid domains. Fully coupled strategy based on the data exchange process via the numerical flux of interface quadrature points is devised. Various turbulence models and the local-variable-based transition model γ -Re θ are assimilated into the unified algorithm framework. The feasibility of the methodology is validated by some test cases. The work can be viewed as a primary attempt towards further investigations of DG and other high-accuracy methods applications in the engineering CHT problems.

The tip clearance flow has a significant influence on the compressor performance and stability. CFD, which is a current tool, has been widely used to investigate the flow by many researchers. In this paper, an unstructured-grid code based on a RKDG method was developed with an improved vertex-based slope limiter to ensure the nonlinear stability. The limiter tests show that the improved limiter has less numerical dissipation and it can keep the high-order accuracy. The performance for NASA Rotor 37 was simulated to validate the RKDG code. The results are compared with the experimental data and the ones computed by NUMECA FINE ™ /Turbo. It is shown that the results computed by the RKDG code are in better agreement with the experimental data, which implies that the high-order accuracy method is very important for improving the CFD reliability. Finally, the tip clearance flow of the compressor was investigated using the RKDG code. It is found that the tip leakage jet flow could be separated into two parts and they go downstream separately without mixing.