Axial Gap Studies on the Flow Behavior and Performance of a Counter Rotating Turbine

A Counter Rotating Turbine (CRT) is an axial flow turbine with a nozzle followed by two rotors that rotate in the opposite direction of each other. Axial gap is an important parameter that affects the performance of turbine stage. Current work contains computationally analyzing the flow physics and performance of CRT with the axial gaps of 15, 30, 50 and 70% of the mean axial chord. Turbine components nozzle and the two rotors are modeled for all the axial gaps of CRT. At nozzle inlet, total pressure is taken as boundary condition and at rotor 2 outlet, mass flow rate is specified. Total pressure, entropy and TKE contours plotted at the inlet and outlet of the blade rows are utilized to analyze the effect of axial gap. Mass flow average distributions of entropy, TKE and relative stagnation pressure loss drawn at rotor 1 and rotor 2 outlets estimate the changes in flow losses with respect to axial gap. The intermediate axial gap of x/a = 0.3 is found to be beneficial for CRT for most of the flow rates. Also, it is found that the smallest and the largest gap cases are showing comparable performance. Thus, results confirm the influence of axial gap on the flow behavior and performance of CRT.