CFD predictions and validation of the National Experimental Turbine Stage
Pennsylvania State University
Abstract
Gas turbines have become the platform technology for modern society’s energy and travel needs. The rising cost of fossil fuels coupled with the environmental need to reduce our carbon footprint make advancements in turbine design more important than ever. The National Experimental Turbine (NExT) program was created to address this problem. NExT is a government–industry–university collaborative effort to create an experimental test bed for improving gas turbine design.
Although experimental data is the gold standard in fluids research, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) provides many advantages and enrichment over experiments, alone. Once validated, CFD can offer i) a much higher resolution of the physics, ii) return of immeasurable parameters, and iii) the ability to explore operating conditions outside the scope of experimental limitation. This work seeks to leverage state of the art methods in CFD in the NExT experimental program to glean a better understanding of CFD methods and flow physics in gas turbines. The computational studies presented in this talk cover two primary topics. First, an assessment of a hierarchy of methods applied to pre-test predictions of NExT is covered. Second, current work on aerodynamic validation including incorporation of as-built airfoil geometry derived from structured light scans is presented.
About the speaker
Mr. Leland Tien is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University, advised by Dr. Robert Kunz in the Computational Multiphase Physics laboratory. Mr. Tien is also employed part time as a research engineer at Penn State’s Steady Thermal Aero Research Turbine laboratory. His dissertation is focused on applied turbomachinery CFD. He received his undergraduate degree in Engineering Science from Penn State.
