Scale Effect on the Gaseous Flow Around a Micro-Scaled Gas Turbine Blade

Two-dimensional compressible momentum and energy equations are solved on gaseous flows around a micro-scaled gas turbine blade (GE-E³) whose axial chord ranges from 86.1μm to 86.1mm to obtain the scale effect. The numerical methodology is based on Arbitrary-Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) method. The flow is assumed to be ‘no heat conduction’ flow. The computations were performed for gaseous flow around a single blade with periodical conditions imposed along the boundaries in the pitch directions. The study is focused on the effect of the scale of the turbine blade on the performance. The predicted pressure distribution on both the pressure and suction sides of the conventional sized blade and both the inlet and outlet Mach numbers were compared with available experimental data to verify the code and the scale effect was discussed.