In the first part of the paper, Computational Fluid Dynamics analysis of the combusting flow within a high-swirl lean premixed gas turbine combustor and over the 1^st row nozzle guide vanes is presented. In this analysis, the focus of the investigation is the fluid dynamics at the combustor/turbine interface and its impact on the turbine. The predictions show the existence of a highly-rotating vortex core in the combustor, which is in strong interaction with the turbine nozzle guide vanes. This has been observed to be in agreement with the temperature indicated by thermal paint observations. The results suggest that swirling flow vortex core transition phenomena play a very important role in gas turbine combustors with modern lean-premixed dry low emissions technology. As the predictability of vortex core transition phenomena has not yet been investigated sufficiently, a fundamental validation study has been initiated, with the aim of validating the predictive capability of currently-available modelling procedures for turbulent swirling flows near the sub/supercritical vortex core transition. In the second part of the paper, results are presented which analyse such transitional turbulent swirling flows in two different laboratory water test rigs. It has been observed that turbulent swirling flows of interest are dominated by low-frequency transient motion of coherent structures, which cannot be adequately simulated within the framework of steady-state RANS turbulence modelling approaches. It has been found that useful results can be obtained only by modelling strategies which resolve the three-dimensional, transient motion of coherent structures, and do not assume a scalar turbulent viscosity at all scales. These models include RSM based URANS procedures as well as LES and DES approaches.

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The development of pre-set wavelength Görtler vortices are studied in the boundary-layer flows on concave surfaces of 1.0 and 2.0 m radius of curvature. The wavelengths of the vortices were pre-set by thin wires of 0.2 mm diameter placed 10 mm upstream and perpendicular to the concave surface leading edge. Velocity contours were obtained from velocity measurements using a single hot-wire anemometer probe. The most amplified or dominant wavelength is found to be 15 mm for free-stream velocity of 2.1 m/s and 3.0 m/s on the concave surface of R = 1 m and 2 m, respectively. The velocity contours in the cross-sectional planes at several streamwise locations show the growth and breakdown of the vortices. Three different regions can be identified based on the growth rate of the vortices. The occurrence of a secondary instability mode is also shown in the form of mushroom-like structures as a consequence of the non-linear growth of the Görtler vortices. By pre-setting the vortex wavelength to be much larger and much smaller than the most amplified one, the splitting and merging of Görtler vortices can be respectively observed.

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Bleeding away a part of the boundary layer next to the wall is an effective method for controlling boundary-layer distortions from incident shock waves or curvature in geometry. When the boundary-layer flow is supersonic, the physics of bleeding with and without an incident shock wave is more complicated than just the removal of lower momentum fluid next to the wall. This paper reviews CFD studies of shock-wave/boundary-layer interactions on a flat plate with bleed into a plenum through a single hole, three holes in tandem, and four rows of staggered holes in which the simulation resolves not just the flow above the plate, but also the flow through each bleed hole and the plenum. The focus is on understanding the nature of the bleed process.

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EquiMar (Equitable Testing and Evaluation of Marine Energy Extraction Devices in terms of Performance, Cost and Environmental Impact) is one of the first round of energy projects under the European Commissions 7th Framework Programme (FP7). The three year EquiMar project aims to deliver a suite of protocols for the evaluation of both wave and tidal converters, harmonizing testing and evaluation procedures across the wide range of available devices, accelerating adoption through technology matching and improving the understanding of both environmental and economic impacts associated with the deployment of devices. The EquiMar protocols will cover site selection, initial design, scaling up of designs, the deployment of arrays and environmental impact assessment as well as economic issues. EquiMar will build on existing protocols, e.g. UK DTI Marine Renewables Development Fund (MRDF) protocols for wave and tidal energy, and engage with international standards setting activities, e.g. IEC TC114.

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Studies on cavitation instabilities of hydrofoils and cascades are reviewed to obtain fundamental understandings of the instabilities observed in turbopump inducers. Most of them are based on the stability analysis of two-dimensional inviscid cavitating flow. The most important finding of the analysis is that the cavitation instabilities depend only on the mean cavity length. For a hydrofoil, the characteristic length is the chord length and partial/transitional cavity oscillation occurs with shorter/longer cavity than 75% of the chord length. For cascades, the characteristic length is the blade spacing and various modes of instabilities are predicted when the mean cavity is longer than 65% of the spacing. In the last part, rotating choke is shown to occur when the cavity becomes longer than the spacing.

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The flow behind the variable area nozzle which corresponds to the flow at the leading edge of the impeller was measured with a 3-hole yaw probe and calculated with CFD. Two nozzle throat-areas were investigated. One is the smallest and the other is the largest opening for the variable nozzle. Test results agreed with the calculated results qualitatively. The leakage flow through the tip clearance of the nozzle vane significantly affected the flow field downstream of the nozzle vane with the smallest opening. However, the effect on leakage flow on the flow field downstream of the nozzle vane with the largest opening was very weak and the effect of wake is dominant.

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To optimize the stationary components in the multistage centrifugal pump, the effects of the return vane profile on the performances of the multistage centrifugal pump were investigated experimentally, taking account of the inlet flow conditions for the next stage impeller. The return vane, whose trailing edge is set at the outer wall position of the annular channel downstream of the vane and which discharges the swirl-less flow, gives better pump performances. By equipping such return vane with the swirl stop set from the trailing edge to the main shaft position, the unstable head characteristics can be also suppressed successfully at the lower discharge. Taking the pump performances and the flow conditions into account, the impeller blade was modified so as to get the shock-free condition where the incidence angle is zero at the inlet.

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During an experimental investigation on a 3-bladed and a 4-bladed axial inducer, a severe surge instability was observed in a range of cavitation number where the blade passage is choked and the inducer head is decreased from non-cavitating value. The surge was stronger for the 4-bladed inducer as compared with a 3-bladed inducer with the same inlet and outlet blade angles. For the 4-bladed inducer, the head decreases suddenly as the cavitation number is decreased. The surge was observed after the sudden drop of head. This head drop was found to be associated with a rapid extension of tip cavity into the blade passage. The cause of surge is attributed to the decrease of the negative slope of the head-flow rate performance curve due to choke. Assuming that the difference between the 3 and 4-bladed inducers is caused by the difference of the blockage effects of the blade, a test was carried out by thickening the blades of the 3-bladed inducer. However, opposite to the expectations, the head drop became smoother and the instability disappeared on the thickened blade inducer. Examination of the pressure distribution on both inducers could not explain the difference. It was pointed out that two-dimensional cavitating flow analyses predict smaller breakdown cavitation number at higher flow rates, if the incidence angle is smaller than half of the blade angle. This causes the positive slope of the performance curve and suggests that the choked surge as observed in the present study might occur in more general cases.

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In order to extract micro hydropower in the very low specific speed range, a Positive Displacement Turbine (PDT) was proposed and steady performance was determined experimentally. However, the suppression of large pressure pulsation is inevitable for practical application of PDT. The objective of the present study is to reveal the mechanism and the characteristics of pressure pulsation in PDT by use of CFD and to suppress the pressure pulsation. Unsteady CFD analysis has revealed that large pressure pulsation is caused by large variation of rotational speed of the following rotor, while the driving rotor, which is output rotor, keeps constant speed. Here is newly proposed a 4-lobe helical type rotor which can reduce the pressure pulsation drastically and the performance prediction of new PDT is determined.

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The effects of the diffuser vane on the performances of the multistage centrifugal pump were investigated experimentally, taking account of the interactions among the diffuser vane, the return vane, and the next stage impeller. It is very important to match well the diffuser vane with the return vane, for improving the hydraulic efficiency of the pump. The efficiency may be more improved by making the cross-sectional area of the channel from the diffuser vane outlet to the return vane inlet larger, as much as possible.

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The main objective of this study was to clarify the origin of the unsteady flows arising in a mixed-flow vaneless diffuser system and also the effects of physical components of the system. The testing equipment consists of a straight tube, a swirl generator, and a mixed-flow vaneless diffuser. Pressure fluctuations of the flow through the tube and diffuser were measured by using a semiconductor-type pressure transducer and analyzed by an FFT analyzer. In the experiment, the velocity ratio (axial velocity/peripheral velocity) of the internal flow, and the geometric parameters of the diffuser were varied. Two kinds of unsteady flows were measured according to the combination of the components, and the origin of each unsteady flow was clarified. The fundamental frequencies of unsteady flows arose were examined by two-dimensional small perturbation analysis.

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The effect of Reynolds number on the performance of a regenerative pump was examined in a low Reynolds number range in experiment. The head of the regenerative pump increased at low flow rates and decreased at high flow rates as the Reynolds number decreased. The computation of the internal flow was made to clarify the cause of the Reynolds number effect. At low flow rates, the head is decreased with increasing the Reynolds number due to the decrease of the shear force exerted by the impeller caused by the increase of leakage and hence local flow rate. At higher flow rates, the head is increased with increasing the Reynolds number with decreased loss at the inlet and outlet as well as the decreased shear stress on the casing wall.

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An innovative method of changing a centrifugal low specific speed pump performance and pressure fluctuation by applying outlet flaps to impeller exit has been investigated. The outlet blade edge section corresponds to the trailing edge of wing on the circular-cascade, which dominates the pump performance and pressure fluctuation. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis of the entire impeller and volute casing and an experimental investigation are conducted. The pressure fluctuation and the vibration of the shaft are measured simultaneously. Kurtosis is applied as a dimensionless parameter with which the unevenness of velocity distribution at impeller outlet is indicated. The influence of the flaps on the pressure fluctuation is explained by the kurtosis. This paper presents a theoretical method of predicting the pump performance related to the attachment of a flap at impeller outlet.

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For mechanical drive steam turbines, the investigation results of corrosion fatigue phenomena in the transient zone are introduced, including basic phenomena on expansion line and actual design and damage experience. These results were analyzed from the standpoint of stress intensity during the start of cracking. In order to resolve such problems, preventive coating and blade design methods against fouling and corrosive environments are developed. Detailed evaluation test results are given for coating performance using a unique test procedure simulating fouling phenomena and washing conditions. Finally, the results of the successful modification of internals and on-line washing results on site are introduced.

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An experiment setup was introduced to study dynamic behaviour of different types of check valves and the effects of air entrainment on the check valve performance under pressure transient condition. The experiment results show that the check valves with low inertia, assisted by springs or small traveling distance/angle gave better performance under pressure transient condition than check valves without these features. Air entrainment was found to affect both wave speed and reverse velocity. With the increase of the initial air void fraction in pipeline, the experiment results show that the wave speed was reduced, the reverse velocity was increased. The first peak pressure increased initially and then decreased with the increase of the initial air void fraction, the pressure surge periods were increased proportionally with air void fraction due to the greatly reduced wave speed. The study can be applied to help choosing suitable check valves for a particular pumping system.

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The Wells turbine rotor consists of several symmetric airfoil blades arranged around a central hub, and the stagger angle is 90 degrees. These characteristics simplify the total construction of OWC type wave energy converters. Although the Wells turbine is simple, the turbine produces a complicated flow field due to the peculiar arrangement of blades, which can rotate in the same direction irrespective of the oscillating airflow. In order to understand these flows, flow visualization is carried out with an oil-film method in the water tunnel. This research aims to analyze the mechanism of the 3-D flows around the turbine with the flow visualization. The flow visualization explained the influence of attack angle, the difference between fan-shaped and rectangular wings, and the sweep angle.

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This paper investigates a variable geometry (VG) mixed flow turbine with a novel, purposely designed pivoting nozzle vane ring. The nozzle vane ring was matched to the 3-dimensional aspect of the mixed flow rotor leading edge with lean stacking. It was found that for a nozzle vane ring in a volute, the vane surface pressure is highly affected by the flow in the volute rather than the adjacent vane surface interactions, especially at closer nozzle positions. The performance of the VG mixed flow turbine has been evaluated experimentally in steady and unsteady flow conditions. The VG mixed flow turbine shows higher peak efficiency and swallowing capacity at various vane angle settings compared to an equivalent nozzleless turbine. Comparison with an equivalent straight vane arrangement shows a higher swallowing capacity but similar efficiencies. The VG turbine unsteady performance was found to deviate substantially from the quasi-steady assumption compared to a nozzleless turbine. This is more evident in the higher vane angle settings (smaller nozzle passage), where there are high possibility of choking during a pulse cycle. The presented steady and unsteady results are expected to be beneficial in the design of variable geometry turbochargers, especially the ones with a mixed flow turbine.

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As a major component of a power plant, a turbine generator must have sufficient reliability. Longer blades have lower natural frequency, thereby requiring that the design of the shaft and blade takes into account the coupling of the blade vibration mode, nodal diameter k=0 and k=1 with vibration of the shaft.
The present work analyzes the coupling of the translation motion of the shaft with in-plane vibration of the blades with k=1 modes. At a rotational speed Ω₁=|ω_s-ω_b|, the resonance of the blades has a relatively large amplitude. A violent coupled resonance was observed at a rotational speed Ω₂=ω_s+ω_b. Resonance in blade vibration at Ω₁=|ω_s-ω_b| was experimentally confirmed.

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