Linearized Unsteady Viscous Turbomachinery Flows Using Hybrid Grids

Abstract

The paper describes the theory and the numerical implementation of a three-dimensional finite volume scheme for the solution of the linearized, unsteady Favre-averaged Navier–Stokes equations for turbomachinery applications. A further feature is the use of mixed element grids, consisting of triangles and quadrilaterals in two dimensions, and of tetrahedra, triangular prisms, and hexahedra in three dimensions. The linearized unsteady viscous flow equations are derived by assuming small harmonic perturbations from a steady-state flow and the resulting equations are solved using a pseudo-time marching technique. Such an approach enables the same numerical algorithm to be used for both the nonlinear steady and the linearized unsteady flow computations. The important features of the work are the discretization of the flow domain via a single, unified edge-data structure for mixed element meshes, the use of a Laplacian operator, which results in a nearest neighbor stencil, and the full linearization of the Spalart–Allmaras turbulence model. Four different test cases are presented for the validation of the proposed method. The first one is a comparison against the classical subsonic flat plate cascade theory, the so-called LINSUB benchmark. The aim of the second test case is to check the computational results against the asymptotic analytical solution derived by Lighthill for an unsteady laminar flow. The third test case examines the implications of using inviscid, frozen-turbulence, and fully turbulent models when linearizing the unsteady flow over a transonic turbine blade, the so-called 11th International Standard Configuration. The final test case is a rotor/stator interaction, which not only checks the validity of the formulation for a three-dimensional example, but also highlights other issues, such as the need to linearize the wall functions. Detailed comparisons were carried out against measured steady and unsteady flow data for the last two cases and good overall agreement was obtained.