Investigation of Low Solidity LP Turbine Cascade With Flow Control: Part 1—Active Flow Control Using Jet-Flap

Abstract

Increasing the airfoil lift and decreasing the solidity of turbine cascade are the effective ways to decrease blade count which lead to the reduction of weight and hardware cost of gas turbine in aircraft engine. The challenge with this effort is to prevent the flow separation on blade suction surface and to keep the efficiency at high levels. Recent investigations on the blade-flap have demonstrated dramatic reduction in the separation losses of turbine. It would be very attractive to integrate the blade-flap in the design of enhanced loaded turbine. The critical science that will enable this design innovation is a comprehensive understanding of the effect of flow control device on the boundary layer separation. The purpose of the present work was to investigate the impact of turbine cascade solidity on loss mechanisms (airfoil lift level) and to study the feasibility to develop low solidity and highly loaded LP turbine cascade blade using blade flap. This paper is the Part I of the study concerned with performance improvement of low solidity and highly loaded LP turbine cascade blade with jet-flap. The Part II is concerned with the Gurney-flap. Investigation on three turbine cascades with same type of airfoil but different solidity is presented in this paper. These turbine cascades are all constructed with the P&W LPTs highly loaded airfoil Pack B. Two dimensional steady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations are solved for the flow of these cascades. It is shown that appropriate jet flap could decrease turbine cascade solidity about 12.5% without the considerable increase in loss, the flow deflection of the turbine cascade mainstream can be increased by jet-flap, and then contribute to increased blade loading. Because of the augmented deflection of the cascade mainstream, the flow velocity at suction side of the adjacent blade increases. This results in extension of the flow accelerating region and reduction of flow diffusion on the blade suction surface, consequently there is a delay in the boundary layer separation and/or makes the reattachment point advanced. In fact, the neighboring blade boundary layer flow is affected by the deflection of the mainstream, not on the flow of local boundary directly.