1390

International Conference on Power Engineering-2007, October 23-27, 2007, Hangzhou, China

Numerical Study on Performance of Axial Turbine in Ship Turbocharger and Off-design Performance Analysis
Liu Ying, Xie Rong, Wang Xiao-fang, Jie Hong-en
School of Energy and Power Engineering, DaLian University of Technology, Liao Ning, 116024, China (E-mail: liuying143@163.com) Abstract: An axial turbine was aerodynamically designed for a ship supercharger, by means of the thermal design of the pulse turbine considering the pulse influence, on the basis of the one of the constant-pressure turbine. Then the design results were compared with the correlative experimental data, and a satisfying conclusion shows the designed axial turbine can meet both the design requirement and the off-design one. Based on this, flow simulation platform was established for the axial turbine on the basis of actual geometrical model by using commercial CFD softwareNUMECA, especially developed for turbo-machinery, and three-dimensional numerical study was carried out on the inner flow field of the axial turbine. Furthermore, for examining the turbocharger performance under off-design condition, the three-dimensional numerical study and analysis were also done respectively under two conditions with different rotation speed and mass flow with FINE/ Turbo, and finally some useful conclusions were drawn. Keywords: Ship turbocharger, Axial turbine, Numerical investigation, Off-design performance analysis were also done respectively under two conditions with difference rotational speed and mass flow with FINE/ Turbo.

1 INTRODUCTION
Turbocharger is a combined component used to increase pressure in diesel motor, a kind of turbo-machine, and its main composition are the turbine and the compressor. It is installed at the flange of exhaust pipe. The exhaust gas from the diesel motor drives the turbine to rotate at high speed, and then the turbine drives the compressor impeller rotating synchronously in another end of the same axis. Thus the pressure and the density of fresh air are increased while entering into the cylinder. At the same time the diesel oil which is injected into the cylinder can be combusted sufficiently so as to increase the output power and to decrease the oil consumption. Nowadays, the requirement for exhaust-gas turbochargers is getting higher and higher. Whether for automotive diesel engines or marine diesel engines, security, reliability and high efficiency are the developing trend of present-day turbocharger. And the turbocharger performance lies on the quality of each component. In this paper, an axial turbine used in ship turbocharger, was designed by using pulse aerodynamic turbine method firstly, and the design results were compared with the correlative experimental data. Then flow simulation platform was established for the axial turbine on the basis of actual geometrical model by using commercial CFD softwareNUMECA, especially developed for turbomachinery, and three- dimensional numerical study was carried out on the inner flow field of the axial turbine. Finally, for examining the turbocharger performance under off-design condition, the three-dimensional numerical study and analysis

2 AERODYNAMICS DESIGN
Whether the turbine is designed well or not is one of the main factors of determining the turbocharger performance. In this paper, all sidedness and rationality were taken into account sufficiently as parameters were chosen in aerodynamics design under the condition of design requirements. Because the inlet parameters of the turbine are pulse, and the efficiency varies with time, which causes non-air-supply ratio and three kinds of additional energy lossesthe windage loss, the air-fleeing loss and the gas-freeing loss, the design method is very different from that of the constant-pressure turbine. For above influences considered, modified coefficients of pulse efficiency, pulse coefficient of energy and flux were introduced. Thus the through-flow structure of the axial turbine was designed. Table 1 is the experimental data under three conditions, namely, No.1 condition with 15622r/min of rotational speed and 0.83 time of designed flux, No.2 condition with 18720r/min of designed rotational speed and flux, No.3 condition with 21527r/min of rotational speed and 1.15 time of designed flux.

Numerical Study on Performance of Axial Turbine in Ship Turbocharger and Off-design Performance Analysis Table 1 The experimental data under three conditions Serial number 1 2 3 4 5 Project name Relative mass Inlet tempertureK Inlet pressure(Kpa) Outlet pressure(Kpa) effective efficiency (%) Symbol G GTD No.1condition 15622r/min 0.83 687.3 132.5 101.1 71.39 No.2condition No.3condition 18720r/min 21527r/min 1 736.8 145.7 101.1 69.63 1.15 705.5 166.5 101.1 69.16

1391

TTD pTD
p2

According to the inlet and outlet parameters, with reference to [1,2], after being analyzed, demonstrated and chosen, it was adopted one segment and single stage axial pulse turbine in this design. Finally, by using one-dimensional aerodynamic design, the turbine main parameters were determined: the nozzle height was 0.0415m, the rotor blade height was 0.4175m, the average diameter of nozzle ring was 0.1945m, the number of nozzle was 20, and the number of rotor blade was 41. Table 2 shows the comparison between the designed efficiency and the experimental one under three conditions. It is evident that the design values are comparatively coincident with the experimental data. It shows that the designed turbine can meet not only the design demands, but also the off-design condition requirement. Therefore, the structure of designed axial turbine is reasonable. Table 2 Comparison between the results of one- dimensional aerodynamic design and experimental data Condition1 Experimental efficiency Computational efficiency Relative Error 71.39 % 72.3 % 1.27 % Condition2 69.63 % 70.5 % 1.25 % Condition3 68.63 % 70.2 % 2.29 %

residual smoothing. The calculation grid of rotor and stator blades were automatically generated by Auto Grid (V5), while the gird of inlet volute was manually created in IGG, and then the two parts of grids were integrated by IGG, which can ensure the inlet boundary condition more coincident with the actual one. The total number of grid is near twelve million with better quality, as shown in Fig. 1 and Fig. 2.


Fig.1 3-D mesh of the total stage adding the inlet volute

 3 3-D NUMERICAL SIMULATION

For further investigating the rationality of the through-flow structure, flow simulation platform was established for the axial turbine on the basis of actual geometrical model by using commercial CFD softwareNUMECA, and three-dimensional numerical study was carried out on the inner flow field of the axial turbine respectively under the three conditions mentioned above, then the flow characteristics of inner flow field were analyzed and compared. Using NUMECA Fine/Turbo, the numerical simulations were conducted by solving the 3-D Reynold-averaged N-S equations. A grid-centered finite-volume method with a second order central scheme for spatial difference and a fourth order Runge-Kutta scheme [4] for temporal difference was chosen in the simulations. The Spalart-Allamaras equation model [5] was selected as a turbulence model. The solution was accelerated by multi-grid method [6], variable time steps and

Fig.2 Mesh of single rotor blade and stator blade In the 3-D numerical simulation, total pressure, total temperature and flux were given at the inlet boundary which

1392

International Conference on Power Engineering-2007, October 23-27, 2007, Hangzhou, China near the surface are rolled up to the middle spanwise, forming the separation line as is shown in figures. While on the top of the rotor blade, tip clearance flow makes the air currents flow to the middle spanwise, so the air currents are attached to the suction surface again to form the re-attachment line. The ratio of the separation line to the spanwise size on the suction surface of the rotor and stator blade reflects the spanwise scale of the passage vortex of the blade. Fig.3 to Fig.6 also indicates that the separation line form and trend under off-design condition is the same as it under design condition, so is the re-attachment line. But it can be obviously seen the stagnation line appears on the pressure surface of the rotor blade and the line is throughout the top to the root under No.3 condition. The stagnation line is also found on the pressure surface of the stator blade. It is shown that larger negative incidence is generated as the air currents entering into the blades. So the blade design can be further improved to make the flow field more reasonable. Similar phenomena can be found in Ref. [3].

are all prescribed in experiment, and the outlet pressure was equal to one atmospheric pressure at the average diameter of the rotor blade. The convergence criteria of iterative methods were set: the global residual was decreased about 4-5 orders of magnitude and flow rate error was less than 0.3% between inlet and outlet. The other performance parameters (such as efficiency, pressure ratio, axial thrust, torque etc.) remained constant in the simulations.

4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Fig.3 to Fig.6 show the streamline on the pressure and suction surface of the rotor and stator blade which were calculated by 3-D numerical simulation. From Fig.3 to Fig.6 (from left to right, respectively corresponding to No.1 condition, No.2-design condition and No.3 condition), it can be seen that the streamline structures are all simple and have similar pattern in the flow passage of the rotor blade and stator blade under the three conditions. Namely, the passage vortex existing in the root and top field of the blade, the air currents

Re-attachment line Stagnation line Separation line

Fig.3 Streamline on the suction surface of the rotor blade

Fig.4 Streamline on the pressure surface of the rotor blade

Fig.5 Streamline on the suction surface of the stator blade Fig.7 and Fig.8 show the velocity distribution. From the field distribution of velocity, it can be seen that all the distribution are alike, and with the increase of flux and rotating speed, the velocity increase too, which shows the off-design performance can be obtained. However, larger slow velocity field exist at the blade concave and back, and the

Fig.6 Streamline on the pressure surface of the stator blade airflow early separates from the blade back arc. The flow field at the blade tail is also disorder with turbulent eddies, bringing relatively large wake loss. Therefore, the designed rotor and stator blade may satisfy the demand of the design, but the blade profile can be further optimized so as to make the flow more uniform, and the flow field distribution more reasonable.

Numerical Study on Performance of Axial Turbine in Ship Turbocharger and Off-design Performance Analysis

1393

Fig.7 Velocity field distribution

Fig.8 Close-up view of velocity at the blade tail

5 CONCLUSION
An axial turbine used for ship turbocharger was designed in this paper, and the design results were compared with the experimental data. Based on this, the inner flow field of the turbine under three different rotating speed and flux was numerically simulated and analyzed, respectively. The conclusions were drawn as follows: 1) The efficiency of one dimension aerodynamic calculation was in close agreement with the experimental one. The structural design of the turbine is reasonable. 2) The velocity field and pressure field, obtained by three-dimensional numerical simulation under three different working conditions, were very similar. And the off-design performances of the turbocharger were ensured. 3) It was shown in 3-D numerical simulation that the profiles of the rotor and stator blade need to be further optimized so as to improve the distribution of the flow field.

REFERENCES
[1] Zhu mei-lin, The Principle of Turbocharger, Defence Industry Press,1982. [2] Huang Zhong-yue and Wang Xiao-fang, Trubocompressor, Chemical Industry Press, 2004. [3] Qi ming-xu and kang shun, Numerical simulation of a 4-stage axial-flow turbine in design and off-design conditions, Thermal Turbine,2005. [4] Jameson A, Schmidt W, Turkel E, Numerical solution of the Euler equation by Finite volume methods with Runge-Kutta time stepping schemes, AIAA Paper, 1981. [5] FINETM User Manual, FINETMVersion, 2001. [6] Brandt A, Multi-level adaptive solutions to boundary-value problems, Math Compute, 1977.