Numerical and Experimental Analysis of Inlet Non-Uniformity Influence on Intercooler Performance

Abstract

The inlet flow of intercooler will be not uniform when the air flows through diffuser behind the low-pressure compressor. With the aid of the CFD technology, the flow field and pressure drop of gas turbine intercooler are analyzed. The equivalent flow area and the equivalent heat transfer methods are proposed in numerical simulations, hence the modeling problem of entire intercooler flow path is solved effectively. Three kinds of scheme of flow path are computed and the flow fields and pressure drops are given in this paper. The influence of inlet flow non-uniformity on the performance of intercooler is analyzed. The numerical computation results indicate that the CFD technology is valuable for analyzing the details of the flow field and improving the intercooler flow path design. The combination of the CFD technology and the intercooler design technique can improve the design of the flow path of gas turbine intercooler. The total pressure loss of the intercooler can be effectively reduced by improving the inlet flow non-uniformity. By comparing the experiment results and computation results of intercooler flow and heat transfer with the plate-fin heat exchanger design calculation, inlet flow non-uniformity has less influence on the heat transfer, but has more influence on the total pressure loss. When the intercooler with special flow structure and layout for marine gas turbine is designed, inlet flow non-uniformity should be fully considered and the total pressure loss should be corrected based on experiments.