• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers Conference
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• 2010.11a
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• pp.33-36
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• 2010

Lots of studies about turbine loss have been done especially about tip leakage loss. But these studies deals with small tip clearances which is less than 5 percent chord. Now, like turbopumps, small turbines have larger tip clearance and it is hardly found related papers in open literature. On this study, with varying tip clearance 1% to 20% chord, loss is measured under inlet velocity at 30m/s and Reynolds number based on chord at 210000. It is found that maximum loss coefficient is 0.113 at 10% clearance, and when tip clearance is larger than 10%, loss is not linearly increased anymore.

• The KSFM Journal of Fluid Machinery
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• v.4 no.1 s.10
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• pp.30-37
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• 2001

The experimental study on the effect of axial clearance between the tip of impeller blades and stationary shroud has been performed. The investigated compressor, which is a part of a small auxiliary power unit engine, consists of a curved inlet, a centrifugal impeller, a channel diffuser and a plenum chamber. It was designed for a total pressure ratio of 4.3 and an efficiency of $77\%$ at design speed of 60,000 rpm. The experiments are carried out in an open-loop centrifugal compressor test rig driven by a turbine. For the four different clearance ratios Cr(clearance/impeller tip width) of 6.25, 10.93, 15.60 and 20.30 percent, the overall performance data are obtained at $97\%,\;90\%$ and $80\%$ of the design speed. The results show the overall pressure ratio decrease of $7.7\%$ and the efficiency loss of $8.7\%$ across the variation of clearance ratio near the design speed. It also indicates that the influence of tip clearance became weaker as the flow rate is reduced and the stable operating range is not significantly influenced by the change of clearance ratio.

• The KSFM Journal of Fluid Machinery
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• v.11 no.6
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• pp.7-17
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• 2008

Fan performances are obtained with various tip clearance gaps and stagger angles of the rotor. A tested fan is an axial-type fan of which the casing diameter is 806 mm. Two different rotors are applied to this test. One is designed on the basis of the free vortex method along the radial direction and the other is designed using the forced vortex method. The operating conditions are varied to the ultimate off-design point as well as the deign point. Overall efficiency, total pressure and input power are compared with the tip clearance gaps and different stagger angle. The experimental results show that changing of the stagger angle has minor influence to the performance when the same rotor is applied. When the tip clearance gap is less than 5% of the rotor span, the overall efficiency, total pressure loss and input power reduction are varied linearly with the variation of the tip clearance gaps. On the design point, the overall efficiency is decreased to the rate of 2.8-2.9 to the increasing of the tip clearance, but the changing rate of the overall efficiency is alleviated when the fan operates at off-design points. In particular, this rate is more quickly declined on a fan with the rotor designed using the forced vortex method. The result of the total pressure shows that the pressure reduction rate is a 0.08-0.1 according to the tip clearance, and additionally the input power reduction rate is a 0.045-0.065 at design point.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers Conference
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• 2008.03a
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• pp.743-750
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• 2008

Asymmetric tip clearance in an axial compressor induces pressure and velocity redistributions along the circumferential direction in an axial compressor. This paper presents the mechanism of the flow redistribution due to the asymmetric tip clearance with a simple numerical modeling. The flow field of a rotor of an axial compressor is predicted when an asymmetric tip clearance occurs along the circumferential direction. The modeling results are supported by CFD results not only to validate the present modeling but also to investigate more detailed flow fields. Asymmetric tip clearance makes local flow area and resultant axial velocity vary along the circumferential direction. This flow redistribution 'seed' results in a different flow patterns according to the flow coefficient. Flow field redistribution patterns are largely dependent on the local tip clearance performance at low flow coefficients. However, the contribution of the main flow region becomes dominant while the tip clearance effect becomes weak as the flow coefficient increases. The flow field redistribution pattern becomes noticeably strong if a blockage effect is involved when the flow coefficient increases. The relative flow angle at the small clearance region decreases which result in a negative incidence angle at the high flow coefficient. It causes a recirculation region at the blade pressure surface which results in the flow blockage. It promotes the strength of the flow field redistribution at the rotor outlet. These flow pattern changes have an effect on the blade loading perturbations. The integration of blade loading perturbation from control volume analysis of the circumferential momentum leads to well-known Alford's force. Alford's force is always negative when the flow blockage effects are excluded. However when the flow blockage effect is incorporated into the modeling, main flow effects on the flow redistribution is also reflected on the Alford's force at the high flow coefficient. Alford's force steeply increases as the flow coefficient increases, because of the tip leakage suppression and strong flow redistribution. The predicted results are well agreed to CFD results by Kang and Kang(2006).

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers Conference
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• 2008.11a
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• pp.145-148
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• 2008

Korea Aeronautics Research Institute (KARI) is developing a turbo pump that has 1-stage impulse turbine and relatively high tip clearance for safety. The objective of this research is to investigate the effect of reaction on tip clearance loss in axial turbines. Both cascades were tested in a subsonic wind tunnel. In each cascade, total pressure was measured for tip clearance ranging from 1% to 20% of chord. In results, increasing tip clearance, total pressure loss in reaction turbines is continually increased but impulse turbines keep almost same level of mass averaged total pressure loss. When tip clearance becomes more than 10% of chord, mass-averaged total pressure loss in impulse turbines is less than in reaction. This means that when tip clearance is more than 10% of chord, impulse turbines have better efficiency than reaction turbines.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.44 no.12
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• pp.1062-1070
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• 2016

The heat transfer and flow characteristics of gas turbine blade tip were investigated in this paper by using the conjugate heat transfer analysis. The rotor inlet boundary condition profile which was taken from the first stage nozzle outlet was used to analyse. The profile contained the velocity and temperature information. This study presents the influence of tip clearance about aerodynamic loss, heat transfer coefficient and film cooling effectiveness with the squealer tip designed blade model which tip clearance variation range from 1% to 2.5% of span. Results showed that the aerodynamic loss and the heat transfer coefficient were increased when the tip clearance was increased. Especially when the tip clearance was 2% of the span, the average heat transfer coefficient on the tip region was increased obviously. The film cooling effectiveness of tip region was increasing with decreasing of the tip clearance. There was high film cooling effectiveness at cavity and near tip hole region.

• The KSFM Journal of Fluid Machinery
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• v.11 no.6
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• pp.46-53
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• 2008

Flow structures in an axial compressor with a non-uniform tip clearance were predicted by solving a simple prediction method. For more reliable prediction at the off-design condition, off-design flow characteristics such as loss and flow blockage were incorporated in the model. The predicted results showed that flow field near the design condition is largely dependent on the local tip clearance effect. However overall flow field characteristics are totally reversed at off-design condition, especially at the high flow coefficient. The tip clearance effect decreases, while the local loss and flow blockage make a complicated effect on the compressor flow field. The resultant fluid induced Alford's force has a negative value near the design condition and it reverses its sign as the flow coefficient increases and shows a very steep increase as the flow coefficient increases.

• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.353-361
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• 2002

The tip leakage flow passing through the clearance between rotor blade tip and casing shroud has been known to occupy an important portion of the rotor overall loss. In this study, flow characteristics in axial flow rotors with different tip clearances is investigated by experimental and numerical methods. The experimental study was carried out to measure static pressure and velocity profiles at the real rotating test rig. The axial flow rotors used for the experiments have ten blades and three different rotor diameter. The tip clearance heights are 1mm, 3mm, and 4.5mm. Measurements were done using spherical type five-hole probe by non-nulling method. The numerical study was carried out to calculate pressure distributions and velocity vectors at the same condition as the experiments in the flow fields of axial flow rotors using Phoenics code.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers Conference
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• 2004.03a
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• pp.240-244
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• 2004

Characteristics of steady and unsteady cavitation in a turbopump inducer were investigated in this paper. To see the effect of tip clearance on the inducer performance, three cases of tip clearance were tested. The helical inducer, which has two blades with inlet tip blade angle of 7.8 degree and tip solidity of 2.7, was tested in the water. In the non-cavitating condition, the inducer head decreased with increase in the tip clearance. Rotating cavitation and cavitation surge were observed through unsteady pressure measurements at the inducer inlet. The cell number and propagation speed of the rotating cavitation were determined through cross-correlation analysis. During the rotating cavitation one cell rotated at the same rotational speed as that of the inducer rotation and the cavitation surge did not rotate. The critical cavitation number increased with increase in the tip clearance at the same flow rate, but the change of critical cavitation number was small at the nominal flow rate.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.40 no.6
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• pp.357-363
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• 2016

In this study, we perform a series of aero-thermo-mechanical analyses to predict the running-tip clearance and the effects of impeller deformation on the performance using a centrifugal compressor. During operation, the impeller deformation due to a combination of the centrifugal force, aerodynamic pressure and the thermal load results in a non-uniform tip clearance profile. For the prediction, we employ the one-way fluid-structure interaction (FSI) method using CFX 14.5 and ANSYS. The predicted running tip clearance shows a non-uniform profile over the entire flow passage. In particular, a significant reduction of the tip clearance height occurred at the leading and trailing edges of the impeller. Because of the reduction of the tip clearance, the tip leakage flow decreased by 19.4%. In addition, the polytrophic efficiency under operating conditions increased by 0.72%. These findings confirm that the prediction of the running tip clearance and its impact on compressor performance is an important area that requires further investigation.