HIGH-FIDELITY SIMULATIONS OF A HIGH-PRESSURE TURBINE STAGE: EFFECTS OF REYNOLDS NUMBER AND INLET TURBULENCE

We present the first wall-resolved high-fidelity simulations of high-pressure turbine (HPT) stages at engine-relevant conditions. A series of cases have been performed to investigate the effects of varying Reynolds numbers and inlet turbulence on the aerothermal behavior of the stage. While all of the cases have similar mean pressure distribution, the cases with higher Reynolds number show larger amplitude wall shear stress and enhanced heat fluxes around the vane and rotor blades. Moreover, higher-amplitude turbulence fluctuations at the inlet enhance heat transfer on the pressure-side and induce early transition on the suction-side of the vane, although the rotor blade boundary layers are not significantly affected. In addition to the time-averaged results, phase-lock averaged statistics are also collected to characterize the evolution of the stator wakes in the rotor passages. It is shown that the stretching and deformation of the stator wakes is dominated by the mean flow shear, and their interactions with the rotor blades can significantly intensify the heat transfer on the suction side. For the first time, the recently proposed entropy analysis has been applied to phase-lock averaged flow fields, which enables a quantitative characterization of the different mechanisms responsible for the unsteady losses of the stages. The results indicate that the losses related to the evolution of the stator wakes is mainly caused by the turbulence production, i.e. the direct interaction between the wake fluctuations and the mean flow shear through the rotor passages.