Dr Vladislav Ganine

Better understanding and more accurate prediction of heat transfer and cooling flows in aero engine components in steady and transient operating regimes are essential to modern engine designs aiming at reduced cooling air consumption and improved engine efficiencies. This paper presents a simplified coupled transient analysis methodology that allows assessment of the aerothermal and thermomechanical responses of engine components together with cooling air mass flow, pressure and temperature distributions in an automatic fully integrated way. This is achieved by assembling a fluid network with contribution of components of different geometrical dimensions coupled to each other through dimensionally heterogeneous interfaces. More accurate local flow conditions, heat transfer and structural displacement are resolved on a smaller area of interest with multidimensional surface coupled CFD/FE codes. Contributions of the whole engine air-system are predicted with a faster mono dimensional flow network code. Matching conditions at the common interfaces are enforced at each time step exactly by employing an efficient iterative scheme. The coupled simulation is performed on an industrial high pressure turbine disk component run through a square cycle. Predictions are compared against the available experimental data. The paper proves the reliability and performance of the multidimensional coupling technique in a realistic industrial setting. The results underline the importance of including more physical details into transient thermal modelling of turbine engine components.

Accurate prediction of metal temperatures, blade tip and seal clearances in high pressure compressor and turbine air systems leads to dramatic improvements in overall aero-engine efficiency and component life. Fast transients during an engine flight profile may introduce large changes in geometry between adjacent rotor and stator components. The changing dynamics in a few critical seals and interfaces can change the dynamics of the entire engine, compromising efficiency, integrity and long service life. In this paper we present results of a coupled aero-thermo-mechanical transient simulation of a high pressure turbine assembly throughout an engine flight cycle. The fluid and solid model geometry is approximated as 2D axisymmetric. The problem, formulated as a four field coupled multiphysics system of equations, is simplified using a quasi-steady state assumption: the transient thermal solid problem is coupled to a sequence of steady fluid problems and static structural problems. The predicted results compare well with the experimental measurements over the entire fluid-solid interface. We show improvement in transient predictions isolating the effects of the solid domain deformation. The remaining transient error is linked to temporal uncertainties in the fluid model inlet boundary conditions which were taken as a spatial average of the main annulus flow conditions.

Better understanding and more accurate prediction of heat transfer and cooling flows in aero engine components in steady and transient operating regimes are essential to modern engine designs aiming at reduced cooling air consumption and improved engine efficiencies. This paper presents a simplified coupled transient analysis methodology that allows assessment of the aerothermal and thermomechanical responses of engine components together with cooling air mass flow, pressure and temperature distributions in an automatic fully integrated way. This is achieved by assembling a fluid network with contribution of components of different geometrical dimensions coupled to each other through dimensionally heterogeneous interfaces. More accurate local flow conditions, heat transfer and structural displacement are resolved on a smaller area of interest with multidimensional surface coupled CFD/FE codes. Contributions of the whole engine air-system are predicted with a faster mono dimensional flow network code. Matching conditions at the common interfaces are enforced at each time step exactly by employing an efficient iterative scheme. The coupled simulation is performed on an industrial high pressure turbine disk component run through a square cycle. Predictions are compared against the available experimental data. The paper proves the reliability and performance of the multidimensional coupling technique in a realistic industrial setting. The results underline the importance of including more physical details into transient thermal modelling of turbine engine components.

This paper presents the transient aerothermal analysis of a gas turbine internal air system through an engine flight cycle featuring multiple fluid cavities that surround a HP turbine disk and the adjacent structures. Strongly coupled fluid-structure thermal interaction problems require significant computational effort to resolve nonlinearities on the interface for each time step. Simulation times may grow impractical if multiple fluid domains are included in the analysis. A new strategy is employed to decrease the cost of coupled aerothermal analysis. Significantly lower fluid domain solver invocation counts are demonstrated as opposed to the traditional coupling approach formulated on the estimates of heat transfer coefficient. Numerical results are presented using 2D finite element conduction model combined with 2D flow calculation in five separate cavities interconnected through the inlet and outlet boundaries. The coupled solutions are discussed and validated against a nominal stand-alone model. Relative performance of both coupling techniques is evaluated.