Analysis of the Near-Wall Flow in a Turbine Cascade by Splat Visualization
This work addresses heat transfer issues in turbine design for jet planes and power plants, but it is incremental as it adapts an existing splat visualization method to a specific simulation case.
The study tackled the problem of minimizing heat transfer between hot gas flow and turbine surfaces by analyzing splat events, which impact heat transfer, using direct numerical simulation on a turbine cascade, revealing insights into splat formation and its relation to vortex structures.
Turbines are essential components of jet planes and power plants. Therefore, their efficiency and service life are of central engineering interest. In the case of jet planes or thermal power plants, the heating of the turbines due to the hot gas flow is critical. Besides effective cooling, it is a major goal of engineers to minimize heat transfer between gas flow and turbine by design. Since it is known that splat events have a substantial impact on the heat transfer between flow and immersed surfaces, we adapt a splat detection and visualization method to a turbine cascade simulation in this case study. Because splat events are small phenomena, we use a direct numerical simulation resolving the turbulence in the flow as the base of our analysis. The outcome shows promising insights into splat formation and its relation to vortex structures. This may lead to better turbine design in the future.