Numerical Investigation of Aerodynamic Blade Excitation Mechanisms in Transonic Turbine Stages

Abstract: With the present drive in turbomachine engine developmenttowards thinner and lighter bladings, closer spaced blade rowsand higher aerodynamic loads per blade row and blade, advanceddesign criteria and accurate prediction methods for vibrationalproblems such as forced response become increasingly importantin order to be able to address and avoid fatigue failures ofthe machine early in the design process. The present worksupports both the search for applicable design criteria and thedevelopment of advanced prediction methods for forced responsein transonic turbine stages. It is aimed at a betterunderstanding of the unsteady aerodynamic mechanisms thatgovern forced response in transonic turbine stages and furtherdevelopment of numerical methods for rotor stator interactionpredictions.The investigation of the unsteady aerodynamic excitationmechanisms is based on numerical predictions of thethree-dimensional unsteady flow field in representative testturbine stages. It is conducted in three successive steps. Thefirst step is a documentation of the pressure perturbations onthe blade surface and the distortion sources in the bladepassage. This is performed in a phenomenological manner so thatthe observed pressure perturbations are related to thedistortion phenomena that are present in the blade passage. Thesecond step is the definition of applicable measures toquantify the pressure perturbation strength on the bladesurface. In the third step, the pressure perturbations areintegrated along the blade arc to obtain the dynamic bladeforce. The study comprises an investigation of operationvariations and addresses radial forcing variations. With thehelp of this bottom-up approach the basic forcing mechanisms oftransonic turbine stages are established and potential routesto control the aerodynamic forcing are presented.For the computation of rotor stator interaction aerodynamicsfor stages with arbitrary pitch ratios a new numerical methodhas been developed, validated and demonstrated on a transonicturbine test stage. The method, which solves the unsteadythree-dimensional Euler equations, is formulated in thefour-dimensional time-space domain and the derivation of themethod is general such that both phase lagged boundaryconditions and moving grids are considered. Time-inclination isutilised to account for unequal pitchwise periodicity bydistributing time co-ordinates at grid nodes such that thephase lagged boundary conditions can be employed. The method isdemonstrated in a comparative study on a transonic turbinestage with a nominal non integer blade count ratio and anadjusted blade count ratio with a scaled rotor geometry. Thepredictions show significant differences in the blade pressureperturbation signal of the second vane passing frequency, whichwould motivate the application of the new method for rotorstator predictions with non-integer blade count ratios.