UNSTEADY 3D NAVIER-STOKES CALCULATION OF A FILM-COOLED TURBINE STAGE WITH DISCRETE COOLING HOLES

Th. Hildebrandt, J. Ettrich NUMECA Ingenieurbro, D-90530 Wendelstein, Germany Thomas.Hildebrandt@numeca.de M. Kluge, M. Swoboda, A. Keskin, F. Haselbach, H.-P. Schiffer ROLLS ROYCE Deutschland, Eschenweg 11, D-15287 Dahlewitz, Germany Marius.Swoboda@rolls-royce.com ABSTRACT Every modern high-pressure turbine needs a highly sophisticated cooling system. The most frequently used cooling method of to date is film cooling, characterized by a high degree of interaction between the main flow and the cooling flow. Therefore the effects of film cooling have to be taken into account in the aerodynamic design of film cooled high-pressure turbines. Using modern commercial turbomachinery oriented CFD-methods, the modeling of film cooling holes can be achieved by various numerical methods of different complexity. The so-called source term modeling is fast and easy to apply, but cannot provide very detailed flow information. In contrast, the discretization of every single cooling hole represents a very complex approach, but provides more in-depth information about the cooling pattern. The efforts of full-scale modeling need to be balanced against the more detailed and accurate results. In addition to the complex geometries of film cooled turbines, the flow phenomena are highly unsteady, thus requiring a CPU intensive time dependent numerical approach. The present paper is focused on a detailed investigation of the unsteady flow field in a film cooled high-pressure turbine stage. An unsteady 3D NavierStokes calculation is applied to the entire stage configuration including a full discretization of all the cooling holes. NOMENCLATURE Symbols M v p Ma Re [-] [ m/s ] [ Pa ] [-] [-] [ kg/m3] Blowing rate Velocity Pressure Mach Number Reynolds Number Density

Subscripts; Abbreviations c 1,2 t is NGV Cooling Inlet, exit conditions total isentropic Nozzle Guide Vane

INTRODUCTION In order to obtain maximum thermodynamic cycle efficiency a high temperature level is required in the high pressure (HP) turbines of modern environmentally friendly gas turbines. The temperature level there is usually by far higher than the maximum allowable temperature of even the most advanced materials. Therefore, every modern HP turbine needs a sophisticated cooling system. From a variety of available cooling methods film cooling emerged as todays standard cooling method. Relatively cool compressor air is injected through numerous holes and slots on the blade and endwall surfaces of a HP-turbine. Apart from the desired influence of the injected cooling air on the heat transfer coefficients of the blade and endwall surfaces, the cooling jets have a considerable effect on the main flow as well (Benz (1994), Hildebrandt et.al. (2001), Vogel (1997)). As a consequence, the effects of film cooling have to be taken into account in the aerodynamic design of a HP turbine. Modern commercial Navier-Stokes solvers provide the designer in the turbomachinery environment with a variety of options to simulate the flow inside the blade passage of a film-cooled turbine. The CFD modeling of film cooling holes can be achieved by various numerical methods of different complexity. The numerical technique of source term modeling is the fastest and least complex method to introduce the effects of film cooling into a 3D Navier-Stokes calculation of a turbine. This method is computationally least expensive and easy to apply, making it well suitable for the fast turn-around times, which are required in the modern design processes. The cooling flow is taken into account by a distribution of various sources of mass, momentum and energy on the blade and endwall surfaces. In contrast, the full modeling of every single cooling hole represents the most complex approach. Using this method every cooling hole, including the cooling air plenum is discretized. Obviously, turn-around times and engineering efforts are by far higher if compared to the source term method. The reward of applying this method to a film-cooled turbine is a high amount of very detailed flow information. The complex flow phenomena of film cooling are apparently time dependent themselves, and additionally, highly influenced by the unsteady rotor-stator interaction of the adjacent blade rows. The impinging wakes of a preceding blade row are periodically altering the local cooling efficiency along the blade surfaces of the succeeding turbine rotor. Vice versa, the circumferentially changing backpressure induced by a succeeding blade row can lead to considerable fluctuations in blade pressure distribution and shock location. The local blowing rate

M=

c vc v

(1)

is a function of the local velocity ratio, hence depending strongly on the pressure gradient between the plenum and the local ejection position on the blade surface. Therefore, a periodically fluctuating blade pressure distribution leads directly to an equivalently fluctuating local film cooling efficiency. Therefore Unsteadiness is crucial if the focus is on very detailed cooling flow phenomena. The present paper is focused on a detailed investigation of an unsteady flow field in a film cooled high-pressure turbine stage. The flow is simulated using an unsteady 3D Navier-Stokes calculation of the entire turbine stage of a nozzle guide vane and rotor configuration including a full modeling of all single cooling holes.

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COMPUTATIONAL METHOD Within the frame of the presented computations a commercial CFD systems has been employed. FINE/Turbo, developed by NUMECA Int. S.A (NUMECA (2002)), is a specialized CFD package for all sort of turbomachinery applications. The package includes grid generation, the flow solver and a post processing software. All program modules are embedded into a turbomachinery specific environment. The numerical scheme solves the 3D Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations (RANS) on general structured non-orthogonal multi-block grids. The flexibility of the structured grids is greatly enhanced by use of so-called Full Non Matching Connections, a technique, which allows to arbitrarily connect grids block of different grid topologies or point numbers to each other. The numerical algorithm incorporated into FINE/Turbo is an explicit four stage Runge-Kutta scheme (Jameson and Baker (1984)). A variety of convergence acceleration techniques are employed, such as implicit residual smoothing, dual time stepping and full multigrid. Space integration is performed using a second order cellcentered finite volume discretization with second and fourth order artificial dissipation. Coarse grid calculations can be carried out in an automatic way on every coarser grid level. A number of turbulence models are available within FINE/Turbo. In the scope of the present work the algebraic turbulence model of Baldwin and Lomax (1978) has been chosen. All solid walls have been treated as fully turbulent. The authors are well aware that a simple turbulence model and the assumption of fully turbulent boundary layers cannot capture sufficiently accurate the quite complex turbulent structures typical for film cooling. With the main objectives of this study in mind comparing a fully discretized film cooling geometry with a source term approach the use of a somewhat simpler model seemed justified and effective. Moreover, new experimental data suggest (Ardey (1998)) that in film cooling simulations the use of any eddy viscosity turbulence model is questionable due to the extreme anisotropic nature of turbulence in these cases. THE MT-1 SINGLE STAGE HP TURBINE The MT-1 single stage HP-turbine, which had been investigated in the present study, is described in detail in (Kluge et.al. (2003). Table 1 summarizes some basic geometrical and aerodynamic specifications of the design data of the TATEF turbine stage. Aero- /Thermodynamics Blade Number NGV / Rotor n 32 / 60, 64* Mass Flow, Inlet m1 17.49 Rotational Speed 9.500 Exit Mach Number Ma2 0.98 Reynolds Number Re2 2.8e6 Gas-to-Wall Temperature Ratio 1.54 Table 1: Design Data of the MT-1 Turbine [-] [ kg/s ] [ RPM] [-] [-]

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In order to carry out unsteady CFD simulations with an acceptable computational effort the domain scaling method had been applied. There, it is desirable to obtain a small common integer factor as a blade number ratio between NGV and rotor. The original blade number of the rotor had been increased from 60 to 64 enabling to perform a time-dependent periodic computation with one stator passage and two rotor passages meshed. Usually the error, which results from changing the solidity, is acceptable, if the change in blade pitch is less than 10%, which is the case herein. NUMERICAL BOUNDARY CONDITIONS Aero- /Thermodynamics pt1 461.000 Direction axial Tt1 444.4 Inlet, Front cavity pt1 943.000 Direction axial into Plenum Tt1 271 Inlet, rear cavity pt1 682.000 Direction axial into Plenum Tt1 272 Outlet p2 (rad. eq.) 142.100 @ Hub Walls: all NGV, rotor hub & blade Tw imposed 288.5 / 333 Walls: all other Adiabatic Inlet, NGV Table 2: Numerical Boundary Conditions These types of inlet and exit boundary conditions are typical for turbomachinery cases. There was some uncertainty about the specification of the wall boundary conditions. As a best possible assumption, the thermal wall boundary conditions had been set to a constant wall temperature inside the entire NGV as well as on the rotor blade surface and hub. All other walls within the domain were treated as adiabatic. Considering the very short measurement times (approx. 500ms) this simplification seems justified. COMPUTATIONAL GRID The numerical domain was discretized using a structured multi-block grid. Compared to an unstructured tetrahedral approach structured grids usually provide a higher numerical accuracy. Consequently, emphasis was laid on a high grid quality in order to minimize numerical errors, particularly inside the cooling holes and their immediate vicinity. The grid in these regions is locally highly refined. This high level of refinement would have led to an overall number of grid points, far beyond any reasonable limits. In order to reduce the problem size coarser grid blocks are located around the highly resolved grid regions. The coarse and fine grid areas are connected by means of a non-congruent block-to-block connection using a fully conservative interpolation technique. The application of this technique in film cooling configurations had been described by Hildebrandt (2001). [ Pa ] [K] [ Pa ] [K] Pa ] [K] [ Pa ] [K]

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Around the blades as well as in the front and rear plenum and inside the cooling holes HOH-topologies had been applied (Fig.1, Fig. 2). The grid is composed of 651 grid blocks with a total number of 2.1 Mio. Grid points. About 75% of the grid points are located in the immediate vicinity of the cooling holes. The refined areas around the rows of cooling holes are visible in Fig.2. These areas are resolved about four times finer in each spatial direction than the surrounding regions of the main flow. The non-dimensional wall distance y+ varies typically around 1 and 2, depending on the local flow conditions. The laminar sub-layer, important for any prediction of wall shear stress or heat transfer, is therefore well captured.

Figure 1: Numerical Grid Blade-to-Blade View / Plenum with Cooling Holes

Figure 2: Numerical Grid on NGV Surface

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COMPUTATIONAL PERFORMANCE All computations were carried out on a single processor PC at 1800 MHz, running under LINUX. Starting from a steady state solution the unsteady computation took about 18 times to pass the rotor leading edge behind the NGV trailing edge in order to achieve a satisfactory periodical behaviour. The unsteady mass flow was taken as a convergence criteria (Fig.3). The total CPU time was in the order of 20 days, requiring about 1 GB of RAM. The overall level of convergence was slightly fluctuating around three orders of magnitude reduction in the total RMS residual.

Figure 3 Mass Flow Convergence History The unsteady calculations were carried out using the domain scaling technique. The rotor pitch was brought from 60 to 64 blades, allowing to mesh two rotor blades with the same periodicity as one NGV pitch. For convergence acceleration dual time stepping was used. The rotor turning was resolved by 32 discrete angular positions for one rotor pitch. COMPARISON FULL DISCRETIZATION / SOURCE TERM APPROACH Iterations for full convergence Grid points Blocks Relative CPU time Relative RAM Source Term ~ 6.200 ~ 1.500.000 16 1.0 1.0 Full Discretization ~ 10.000 ~2.100.000 651 ~2.4 ~1.55

Table 3: Resource requirements Apart from the human effort of meshing 120 additional cooling holes, the source term approach requires considerably less computational resources. The larger RAM requirements are obvious, considering the higher number of grid cells and blocks. In addition, the CPU time increases over-proportionally since the coupling between the main flow and the cooling jets is much stronger in case of the fully discretized approach. Here, convergence is slowed down due to the slow propagation from the main flow through the holes into the plenum.

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RESULTS Blade Pressure Distribution The blade pressure distribution, given as isentropic Mach number (Fig. 4) in the NGV at 50% span compares the results of the steady and unsteady results of both the source term approach and the fully discretized cooling holes as well as experiments. Quite interestingly, although the unsteady results are fluctuating within a hardly visible range, the time average deviates significantly from the steady calculation performed by using a mixing plane approach. The differences occur mainly in three areas. First, all the pressure peaks around the emerging cooling jets are by far more dominant in the unsteady calculation than in the steady results. Here, any influence from the downstream rotor can be excluded since the location of the cooling holes is upstream of the sonic throat. The pressure peaks are particularly significant in case of the fully meshed cooling holes, and less obvious in the source term results. These pressure over- and undershoots originate in a quasi stagnation of the main flow immediately in front of the cooling jet. After a severe deceleration, the main flow is forced around the cooling jet resulting in a strong acceleration. In such a case the cooling jet behaves very much like a solid obstacle in the flow, characteristic for cylindrical cooling holes (Hildebrandt, Ganzert, Fottner (2000)). Strong interactions between the emerging cooling jets and the main flow occur. These interactions lead to a complicated system of vortices (Vogel (1997)), which are prone to self-excited unsteadiness.

Figure 4: Isentropic Mach Number Distribution NGV 50% Span The second region of interest is around the exits of the second row of cooling holes located at the pressure side at around (x/lax = 0.5). The cooling holes on the pressure side are arranged in two double rows. In the steady calculation, a strong peak occurs, which corresponds to the first set of holes of the second rows, while the effects from the second part of the double row is barely visible. In contrast, the time

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accurate solution produces the dominant velocity peak around the position of the second set of cooling holes in the double row. The unsteadily computed jets of the first row are apparently by far stronger than their counterparts from the steady solution. The strong peak visible for the first cooling hole row on the suction side gives also evidence to this. Consequently, the stronger unsteady jet of the first line of holes forces the main flow away from the blade surface, which results in a much less severe interaction between the main flow and the jets emerging from the second line of holes. Again this effect is by far less pronounced, but still detectable in case of the source term approach. Here, the cooling jets are always weaker than in case of the fully discretized holes. The steady source term calculation hardly shows any sign of the cooling jets in the isentropic Mach number distribution. Third, the second row of cooling holes on the suction side have the most visible effect on the main flow, recognizable by a strong pressure under- and overshoot. The location (x/lax = 0.7) is close to the peak Mach-Number of the main flow. Hence, the jets are emerging into a region of low pressure, resulting in a high local blowing rate. The succeeding shock (x/lax = 0.75) is less pronounced in the unsteady timeaveraged calculation. The unsteady shock fluctuations are smeared out by the timeaveraging. Since there are hardly any differences between source term approach and the discretized cooling holes, it is obvious that this phenomena is not connected to any film cooling effects.

Figure 5: Blade Pressure Distribution Rotor 50% Span The blade pressure on the rotor surface is given for all the unsteady time steps, the unsteady time average and the steady computation (Fig. 5). Naturally, the time dependent fluctuations inside the rotor are by far more dominant, forced by the impinging wakes from the upstream NGV. The differences between the time averaged and the steady results is largest at the rotor leading edge. It is this region, which suffers most form the numerical simplifications necessary for a mixing plane approach. The range of the time dependent fluctuations is large throughout nearly the complete blade. However, approaching the trailing edge, the fluctuations are damped out, showing hardly any influence on the rotor exit Mach number.

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Heat Transfer Coefficients The heat transfer on the blade surfaces is expressed by the Nusselt number Nu = L q k Tg TW  (2)

Similar to the blade pressure distribution the unsteady effects are less obvious in the NGV. There, the most significant phenomena are taking place on the suction side close to the leading edge. The ejecting cooling flow interacts with the main flow, triggering time dependent separations of the main flow immediately behind the NGV leading edge. The obvious discontinuity at around 50% normalized axial distance (x/lax = 0.5) on the NGV suction surface is caused by the connection of a very fine grid to the relatively coarse surrounding grid. The high gradients of the quite sensitive Nusselt number are smeared out on the coarser grid, causing a discontinuity if plotted along the blade surface.

Figure 6: Nusselt Number Distribution, NGV 50% Span The overall level of the Nusselt number along the uncooled rotor blade surface is by far smaller compared to the cooled NGV. Unsteady effects are dominant throughout the entire blade passage (Fig. 7). The range of the time dependent Nusselt number can reach more than three times the level of the steady or time averaged calculation questioning the reliability of steady heat transfer calculations in multistage configurations. The hot streaks of uncooled flow and the cooling jets emerging from the NGV enter the rotor passage in an alternating way (Fig. 8). In cases where relatively cool air from the jets impinges on the rotor blade surface the Nusselt number changes its sign, indicating a heat flux from the rotor into the flow (Fig.7).

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Figure 7: Nusselt Number Distribution, Rotor 50% Span .

Figure 8: Absolute Total Temperature Distribution, Rotor 50% Span Flow Details In contrast to a less labour- and CPU-intensive set-up with source terms (Kluge et.al. (2003)) the meshing of every single cooling hole, including the plenum provides a much higher level of detailed information. Since the local flow conditions at the cooling hole exits are not longer a fixed boundary condition as in the source term approach, the local blowing rate has the freedom to adapt itself according to the local flow conditions. Consequently, the local blowing rate varies from hole to hole, obvious in the distribution of the heat transfer coefficient in Figure 9.

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Figure 9: Heat Transfer Coefficient in NGV The cooling flow enters the blade passage in a typical flow pattern (Fig. 10). In dependence on the inclination angle, the local blowing rate and the shape of the cooling hole, the emerging jet acts much like a solid obstacle. The incoming boundary layer of the main flow rolls up into a horseshoe vortex, causing a counterrotating kidney vortex behind the jet. (Hildebrandt et.al. (2002), Wilfert (1994)). This vortex configuration is responsible for the hot gas entrainment beneath the cool air, a distinct and undesired feature of cylindrical cooling holes.

Figure 10: Vortex Configuration at Cooling Flow Exit CONCLUSIONS Unsteady calculations of a transonic film cooled turbine stage where the cooling holes and the cold air plenum is discretized represent a high level of very detailed information from the flow. Clearly, on the downside of this approach are the high CPU requirements and the quite labour intense pre-processing. Both limitations prohibit the use of such a method in the frame of the daily design work in industry, which is characterized by short turn around times. The source term approach, presented in Kluge et. al. (2003) is more suitable in such an environment, but suffers

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not only from a lack of detailed flow information, but more important from an uncertainty in the specification of the correct boundary condition for the source terms. Here, a full discretization offers the advantage that no boundary conditions are necessary on the exit surface of the cooling holes as long as the plenum is taken into account. However, the boundary conditions for the plenum are relatively straightforward to obtain. An option is proposed to combine these two approaches. First, a set of fully discretized simulations are conducted for typical configurations and operating conditions. From these results, boundary conditions for the source term approach can be derived in order to calibrate the source term boundary conditions. But even then, the immediate vicinity of the cooling holes will be better captured using a full discretization of holes and plenum. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT The reported work was carried out under the contract of the European Commission as part of the BRITE EURAM project contract number BRPR-CT-97-0519, Project number BE97-4440 (TATEF).The authors wish to acknowledge the financial support as well as the contributions from ALSTOM POWER, FIAT AVIO, ITP, SNECMA, TURBOMECA, MTU AeroEngines, ROLLS-ROYCE Plc. and ROLLS ROYCE DEUTSCHLAND. REFERENCES [1] Ardey, S., (1998): Untersuchung der aerodynamischen Effekte von Vorderkanten-Khlluftausblasung an einem hochbelasteten Turbinengitter, Ph.D. Thesis, University of the German Armed Forces Munich, Germany [2] Baldwin, B.S.; Lomax H., (1978): Thin Layer Approximation and Algebraic Model for Separated Turbulent Flow, AIAA Paper 78-0257 [3] Benz, E. (1994): Entwicklung und Erweiterung von grundlegenden Anstzen zur numerischen Berechnung turbulenter Unter- und berschallstrmungen in Gasturbinen, Ph.D. Thesis, University Karlsruhe, Germany [4] Hildebrandt, Th.; Ganzert, W., Fottner, L. (2000): Systematic Experimental and Numerical Investigations on the Aerothermodynamic of a Film Cooled Turbine Cascade with Variation of the Cooling Hole Shape Part II, ASME Paper 00-GT-298 [5] Hildebrandt, Th.; (2001): CFD Simulation Filmgekhlter Turbinen, VDI-GET 2001, Dsseldorf, Germany [6] Jameson, A.; Baker, T.J.; (1984): Multigrid Solution of the Euler Equations for Aircraft Configurations, AIAA Paper 84-0093 [7] Kluge, M.; Swoboda, M.; Keskin, A.; Haselbach, F.; Schiffer, H.-P., Hildebrandt, Th.; Ettrich, J. (2003): Unsteady 3D Navier-Stokes Calculation of a Film-Cooled Turbine Stage, Cooling Flow Modeling via Source Term Approach [8] NUMECA Int. S.A; (2002), FINE/Turbo User Manual, V. 5.3, Brussels, Belgium [9] Vogel, D.T.; (1997): Numerische Untersuchung des Mischungsverhaltens von Filmkhlstrahlen in Turbinenstrmungen, DLR-Report 96-35, Institut fr Antriebstechnik, DLR Cologne, Germany [10] Wilfert, G.; Fottner, L.; (1994): The Aerodynamic Mixing Effect of Discrete Cooling Jets with the Mainstream Flow on a Highly Loaded Turbine Cascade, ASME Paper 94-GT-235

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