Study of Flow Controlling on LP Turbine at Different Reynolds Number

Active and passive techniques have been used in the past, to control flow separation. Numerous studies were published on controlling and delaying the flow separation on low pressure turbine. In this study, a single dimple (i.e. passive device) is engraved on the suction side of LP turbine cascade T106A. The main aim of this research is to find out the optimum parameters of dimple i.e. diameter (D) and depth (h) which can produce strong enough vortex that can control the flow either in transition or fully turbulent phase. Furthermore, this optimal dimple is engraved to suppress the boundary layer separation at different Reynolds number (based on the chord length and inlet velocity). The dimple of different depth and diameter are used to find the optimal depth to diameter ratio. Computational results show that the optimal ratio of depth to diameter (h/D) for dimple is 0.0845 and depth to grid boundary layer (h/δ) is 0.5152. This optimized dimple efficiently reduces the normalized loss coefficient and it is found that the negative values of shear stresses found in uncontrolled case are being removed by the dimple. After that, dimple of optimized parameters are used to suppress the laminar separation bubble at different Re∼25000, 50000 and 91000. It was noticed that the dimple did not reduce the losses at Re∼25000. But at Re∼50000, it produced such a strong vortex that reduced the normalized loss coefficient to 25%, while 5% losses were reduced at Re∼91000. It can be concluded that the optimized dimple effectively controlled flow separation and reduced normalized loss coefficient from Re 25000 to 91000. As the losses are decreased, this will increase the low pressure turbine efficiency and reduce its fuel consumption.