Tutorial: Compressible Flow over a Turbine Cascade

Introduction
The purpose of this tutorial is to provide guidelines and recommendations for solving a real world CFD problem which includes:

• Building the geometry and generating a mesh in GAMBIT

• Setting up the CFD model in FLUENT

• Solving the problem and comparing the results with the experimental data

The problem is to predict the performance of a highly-loaded linear transonic turbine guide vane cascade. The experimental measurements were performed at the Von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics.

The problem is to predict the performance of a highly-loaded linear transonic turbine guide vane cascade. The experimental measurements were performed at the Von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics.

Problem Description

The schematic of the problem is shown in Figure. The linear cascade consists of 5 blades. The central blade is instrumented for data measurements and is also the focus of this numerical simulation. The incident flow angle to the cascade is 0 degree. Isentropic Mach number at the outlet is 0.84, and outlet Reynolds number is 1e6. The boundary conditions of total pressure, total temperature, turbulence intensity are:

143500 Pa Total Pressure-absolute
300 K         Total Temperature
5 %            Turbulence Intensity
12 mm       Turbulence Length Scale

Static pressure at the outlet is 90405 Pa. Periodicity of the flow through the cascade allows
the use of periodic boundary condition along the top and the bottom sides of the domain surrounding the central blade