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Grid Generation for CFD Analysis of Turbomachinery

Praveen Kumar, Manoj Mannari & Ganesh Visavale1

LearnCAx, CAx education division
Centre for Computational Technologies Pvt. Ltd., Pune, India

Note: Videos used in this blog (if any) are not included in this document. Please visit the
original blog to view the videos.

Though CFD has been widely used as a standard and well established engineering design
analysis and optimization tool, the turbomachinery flow simulation still remains one of the
challenges to handle. The typical reasons that make them so are the very complex nature
of geometries and flow physics encountered in turbomachines. The following phenomena
make turbomachinery flows extremely intricate and difficult to model for CFD simulation
studies:

shear layer developing on curved surfaces

have separated flows due to shock and boundary layer interactions (in transonic case)
or corner separation during stall
involve swirling flows and vortices
interacting boundary layer (between blade surface and casing and end wall boundary
layers)

In the complete CFD analysis of turbomachines, Grid generation becomes a very

challenging task. This is mainly due to the geometries that are often complicated with
twisted blades of different curvatures at different radii. This adds to the stringent
meshing requirements to capture the above mentioned flow features. Having already gone
through the CAD cleanup for CFD analysis of turbomachines in our earlier blog CAD Repair
for CFD Analysis of Turbomachinery, we shall now have an overview of the best practices
followed in industry for grid generation of a rotating machine with a software demo video.

Dr. Ganesh Visavale (ganesh@cctech.co.in), LearnCAx, Centre for Computational Technologies Pvt. Ltd

1 Akshay Residency, 50 Anand Park, Aundh, Pune 411007, India

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Grid Generation:
Process of discretization of a fluid domain into smaller volumes made up of quad/hex,
tri/tet, and prism elements is called grid generation. Mesh generation for a turbo/
rotating machines involves the following steps:
1. Choice of Mesh/Grid Type :
Fluid flow analysis in turbo-machinery demands a high quality hexahedral mesh to
simulate the flow-path. Structured hexahedral mesh is created using Multi-block method
and is preferred over unstructured tetrahedral mesh for the following reasons,

Relatively less cell count needed to resolve geometry

Provides more accuracy
Easy boundary layer resolution
Can have relatively large aspect ratio than unstructured cells

A structured hexahedral mesh provides lower cell count and reduced numerical error if the
mesh is aligned with the flow. On the downside cell quality suffers with increased
geometric complexity. So, after CAD clean-up, the feasibility of creating a structured
multi-block hexahedral mesh for the geometry should be studied.
For more complex or odd geometries, possibility of hexahedral mesh becomes thin and an
unstructured tetrahedral mesh is preferred over hexahedral mesh. In such cases, along
with tetrahedrons, generating good quality prism cells on the wall surfaces becomes
necessary, to resolve boundary layer and to maintain first cell height thereby wall Y+
value that a turbulence model demands.
In some cases, a hybrid mesh is generated i.e., hexahedral mesh is generated in the
impeller (rotating fluid) region and a tetrahedral + prism mesh is created in the
volute/casing (stationary fluid zone) region. In such cases, the interface may have a nonconformal mesh connectivity.

Usually, a multi-block hexahedral mesh approach is used for axial flow machines and a
hybrid mesh approach is used for radial/centrifugal and mixed flow machines. So, the
choice of mesh depends on the complexity of the geometry and nature of flow physics we
are interested to study.

1 Akshay Residency, 50 Anand Park, Aundh, Pune 411007, India

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2. Periodic Meshing :
To reduce the time, efforts and complexity of meshing the rotational periodicity of the
impeller geometry is taken advantage. Axial machines and rotating fluid zone of radial &
mixed flow machines are meshed using this approach. Choosing a single periodic flow
passage is the first step in this approach. The periodic angle of the flow passage is decided
by the number of vanes/blades present.
Periodic angle or Angle of Rotational Periodicity = 360 / number of blades
Example:

For a radial turbine with 16 blades, Angle of rotational periodicity = 360 / 16 = 22.5
(single blade passage)
For a pump with 4 blades, Angle of rotational periodicity = 360 / 4 = 90 (single blade
passage)

This periodic geometric sector can be chosen in two different ways.

Flow passage between two blades (suction side of first blade to the pressure side of
next blade)
To have one complete blade inside the periodic flow passage

There are two different scenarios based on the flow physics. If the flow physics is also
periodic (most axial flow machines), the mesh is generated only for a single blade fluid
passage (theta), regardless of the number of blades and is directly used for simulation.

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But if the flow physics is not periodic (radial & mixed flow machines with volute), the
mesh is generated for the single periodic flow passage / sector and is copy rotated to get
mesh for the complete geometry (360). Meshing software provides an option for periodic
meshing to ensure both sides of periodic passage has same number of nodes and same
node location with a rotational offset of theta.
3. Mesh Size/Count:
Mesh size or count is nothing but the total number of cells used to fill the flow domain.
The required mesh size depends on the complexity of the geometric features and the
purpose of simulation. The number of nodes or cells assigned should be sufficient enough,

To resolve the geometry

To capture the flow physics

As a thumb rule, following cell counts are used:

Blade surfaces (stream wise) 100 to 120 cells

Blade to blade direction (radial) 50 to 60 cells
Hub to shroud direction 30 to 40 cells
Around leading and trailing edges 15 to 30 cells

Thermal simulation/Conjugate heat transfer simulation requires a refined surface mesh to

obtain realistic heat flux values at the fluid-solid interface.
4. Boundary Layer Resolution:
Cell count normal to the wall depends on the level of boundary layer resolution and the
first cell height required for the wall function being used.
For design iterations, a wall function approach is sufficient. This requires a wall Y+ value
between 20 to 200 for the first cell. The outer limit of the Y+ depends on the actual
Reynolds number. For a low Re flow, keep the maximum wall Y+ value as low as possible.
Boundary layer region should have 8 to 10 cells in wall normal direction.
For more accurate solution where loss prediction is very important, a wall treatment
approach is used. This requires a wall Y+ value less than 1 for the first cell. Boundary layer
region should have 15 to 30 cells in wall normal direction.

1 Akshay Residency, 50 Anand Park, Aundh, Pune 411007, India

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5. Mesh Quality:
The final mesh is smoothened to ensure quality criteria required by the CFD solver. This is
an important step as the quality of mesh has an impact on rate of convergence, solution
accuracy and CPU time required.
In the boundary layer region, high grid resolution with a cell expansion ratio of 20 to 25%
is maintained. In regions other than boundary, the expansion ratio can go from 30 to 50%
where the cell direction does not change suddenly.
A short video with mesh generation for the periodic sector and its copy rotated to create
mesh for the entire geometry using ANSYS ICEM CFD software is demonstrated.

Further in our next blog we shall try to explore about the different solver models used to
simulate turbomachinery flows.
References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbomachinery
Mod-01 Lec-38 CFD for Turbomachinery: Grid Generation, Boundary Conditions for Flow
Analysis, NPTEL, Turbomachinery Aerodynamics by Prof. Bhaskar Roy,Prof. A M
Pradeep, Department of Aerospace Engineering, IIT Bombay.
MIT course ware/multi stage axial compressor http://web.mit.edu/16.unified/www/FALL/thermodynamics/notes/node91.html
An Introduction to Energy Conversion: Turbomachinery, Volume 3 by V. Kadambi,
Manohar Prasad.

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