An Improved Incidence Losses Prediction Method for Turbine Airfoils

The off-design performance of axial turbines is usually predicted by calculating the incidence losses using empirical correlations. Periodic review and improvement to these prediction methods, to reflect recent turbine designs and test results, are essential for the accurate assessment of losses in turbine airfoils. The purpose of the present work is to evaluate existing turbine incidence loss correlations, and present an improved prediction method for profile and secondary losses at off-design conditions which correlates better with the available experimental results. The incidence losses are shown to be a function of leading edge diameter, pitch, aspect ratio and channel convergence.