Numerical Investigation of Airfoil Clocking in a Three-Stage Low-Pressure Turbine

Abstract

A quasi-three-dimensional, blade-to-blade, time-accurate, viscous solver was used for a three-stage LP turbine study. Due to the low Reynolds number, transitional computations were performed. Unsteady analyses were then carried out by varying the circumferential relative position of consecutive vanes and blade rows to study the effects of clocking on the turbine’s performance. A clocking strategy developed in order to limit the number of configurations to be analyzed is discussed. The optimum analytically-determined clocking position is illustrated for two different operating conditions, referred to as cruise and takeoff. The effects of clocking on wake interaction mechanisms and unsteady blade loadings is presented and discussed. For low Reynolds number turbine flows, the importance of taking transition into account in clocking analysis is demonstrated by a comparison with a fully turbulent approach.