Influence of upstream stator on rotor flutter stability in a low pressure steam turbine stage

Conventional blade flutter prediction is normally based on an isolated blade row model, however, little is known about the influence of adjacent blade rows. In this article, an investigation is presented into the influence of the upstream stator row on the aero-elastic stability of rotor blades in the last stage of a low pressure (LP) steam turbine. The influence of the upstream blade row is computed directly by a time-marching, unsteady, Navier-Stokes flow solver in a stator-rotor coupled computational domain. The three-dimensional flutter solution is obtained, with adequate mesh resolution, in a single passage domain through application of the Fourier-transform based Shape-Correction method. The capability of this single-passage method is examined through comparison with predictions obtained from a complete annulus model, and the results demonstrate a good level of accuracy, while achieving a speed up factor of 25. The present work shows that the upstream stator blade row can significantly change the aero-elastic behaviour of an LP steam turbine rotor. Caution is, therefore, advised when using an isolated blade row model for blade flutter prediction. The results presented also indicate that the intra-row interaction is of a strong three-dimensional nature.