Numerical investigation of partial admission phenomena at midspan of an axial steam turbine

• This paper presents unsteady Navier-Stokes analysis to investigate partial admission phenomena in an axial two-stage steam turbine. The computations are performed in two-dimensional flow conditions at the midspan of the turbine with CFD software Fluent. Unlike some previous numerical work published in open literature, the partial admission in the present study is introduced into the model by blocking only one segmental arc (85.7°) of the guide vanes at the first stage. It is therefore necessary to model the whole annulus of the turbine in the numerical simulations. Results of the analysis show that the peak static pressure drop occurs downstream of the blockage at the entrance to the blocked region where emptying of the rotor channel occurs. The first stage rotor blades experience large static pressure changes on their surfaces and large tangential and axial forces. The magnitude of the tangential and axial forces is twice as large at the entrance to the cavity behind the blockage than at the exit of the blocked region. Entropy concentration downstream of the blockage is considerably high due to the nonuniformities in the flow field. The present results show good agreement between experiments and computations, in tendency of the circumferential static pressure at different axial cross sections. The difference between the numerical and experimental absolute values of the circumferential static pressure drop in the blocked region indicates that the three-dimensional effects are very important to the flow field behind the blockage.

Ämnesord

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Maskinteknik -- Energiteknik (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Mechanical Engineering -- Energy Engineering (hsv//eng)

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