Numerical Simulations of Unsteady Fluid Flow and Heat Transfer in a Transonic Turbine Stage

Abstract

In this work, a numerical study has been performed to simulate the unsteady fluid flow and heat transfer in a transonic high-pressure turbine stage. The main objective of this study is to understand the unsteady flow field and heat transfer in a single transonic turbine stage using an unsteady structured Navier-Stokes solver. For the time accurate computation, a fully implicit time discretization, dual-time stepping, is performed. The results of the CFD simulations are compared with experimental heat transfer and aerodynamic results available for the so-called MT1 turbine stage. The predicted heat transfer and static pressure distributions show reasonable agreement with experimental data. In particular, the results show significant fluctuations in heat transfer and pressure at midspan on the rotor blade, and that the rotor has a limited influence on the heat transfer to the NGV at mid span.