Aerodynamic design of a high-efficiency two-stage axial turbine, using streamline curvature method and performance optimisation by clocking of stator blades

Abstract Aerodynamic design of a high-efficiency two-stage axial turbine is carried out using a hybrid method through implantation of a two-step design procedure. In the first step, the well-known streamline curvature (SLC) and free vortex (FV) methods are properly combined to establish three-dimensional geometries of the blades at each row and to obtain the flow field properties. The second step is provided to obtain the highest aerodynamic efficiency by optimum clocking of the second stator blades relative to the first ones through executing steady and unsteady computational fluid dynamics (CFD) of three-dimensional viscous flow. Slight discrepancies were observed between gas dynamics results of the SLC and those of CFD. Total pressure and temperature at the turbine outlet, obtained from SLC method, differed from those obtained by 3D-CFD technique by 13.06% and 1.88% respectively. Aerodynamic efficiency of the turbine is obtained about 91.83%, based on 3D-CFD. Time-averaged results showed that under the optimum clocking of the second row stator blades, inlet total pressure and output power of the second rotor increase by 0.23%, and 0.93%, respectively, in comparison to the worst clocking case. These augmentations resulted in increased total to total efficiency of the second stage by 0.444%. Additionally, the total output power of the two stages increased by 0.71% through the optimum clocking. Modeling the unsteady wake flow trajectory within the blades passages confirmed that all of these beneficial effects happen if the upstream wake impinges on the leading edge region of the second stator blades.