CFD Analysis of a Partial Admission Turbine Using a Frozen Rotor Method

A numerical flow analysis has been performed on the partial admission turbine of KARI turbopump to support the aerodynamic and structural dynamic assessments. The flow-field in a partial admission turbine is essentially three dimensional and unsteady because of a tip clearance and a finite number of nozzles. Therefore the mixing plane method is generally not appropriate. To avoid heavy computational load due to an unsteady three dimensional calculation, a frozen rotor method was implemented in steady calculation. It adopted a rotating frame in the grid block of a rotor blade by adding some source terms in governing equations. Its results were compared with a mixing plane method. The frozen rotor method can detect the variation of flow-field dependent upon the blade's circumferential position relative to the nozzle. It gives a idea of wake loss mechanism starting from the lip of a nozzle. This wake loss was assumed to be one of the most difficult issues in turbine designers. Thus, the frozen rotor approach has proven to be an efficient and robust tool in design of a partial admission turbine.