The present study is a fundamental approach to develop the measuring technology for minute fluctuating pressures on the three-dimensional blade surfaces of the fan which rotates with an arbitrary rotation-axis direction. In this situation, we are required to correct the centrifugal-force effect, the gravitational-force effect and the other leading-error effects for accurate measurements of the minute pressures. The working fluid is air. A pressure transducer rotating with an arbitrary attitude is closely sealed by a twofold shroud system. The rotational motion with an arbitrary attitude is produced by fixing the pressure transducer to the cantilever which is connected to a motor-driven disc of 500mm in diameter and 5mm in thickness. As a result, we have quantitatively determined main governing effects upon the non-effective component of the pressure-transducer signal.

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The performance of the crossover system of a centrifugal compressor stage consisting of static components of 180° U-bend, return channel vanes and exit ducting with a 90° bend is investigated. This study is confined to the assessment of performance of the crossover system by varying the shape of the return channel vanes. For this purpose two different types of Return Channel Vanes (RCV1 and RCV2) were experimentally investigated. The performance of the crossover system is discussed in terms of total pressure loss coefficient, static pressure recovery coefficient and vane surface pressure distribution. The experimentation was carried out on a test setup in which static swirl vanes were used to simulate the flow at the exit of an actual centrifugal compressor impeller with a design flow coefficient of 0.053. The swirl vanes are connected to a mechanism with which the flow angle at the inlet of U-bend could be altered. The measurements were taken at five different operating conditions varying from 70% to 120% of design flow rate. On an overall assessment RCV1 is found to give better performance in comparison to RCV2 for different U-bend inlet flow angles. The performance of RCV2 was verified using numerical studies with the help of a CFD Code. Three dimensional sector models were used for simulating the flow through the crossover system. The turbulence was predicted with standard k-ε, 2-equation model. The iso-Mach contour plots on different planes and development of secondary flows were visualized through this study.

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This paper deals with the Design and Analysis of a Controlled Diffusion Aerofoil (CDA) Blade Section for an Axial Compressor Stator and Effect of incidence angle and Mach No. on Performance of CDA. CD blade section has been designed at Axial Flow Compressor Research Lab, Propulsion Division of National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL), Bangalore, as per geometric procedure specified in the U.S. patent (4). The CFD analysis has been performed by a 2-D Euler code (Denton's code), which gives surface Mach No. distribution on the profiles. Boundary layer computations were performed by a 2-D boundary layer code (NALSOF0801) available in the SOFFTS library of NAL. The effect of variation of Mach no. was performed using fluent . The surface Mach no. distribution on the CD profile clearly indicates lower peak Mach no. than MCA profile. Further, boundary layer parameters on CD aerofoil at respective incidences have lower values than corresponding MCA blade profile. Total pressure loss on CD aerofoil for the same incidence range is lower than MCA blade profile.

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This paper presents a procedure for the design optimization of a centrifugal compressor. The centrifugal compressor consists of a centrifugal impeller, vaneless diffuser and volute. And, optimization techniques based on the radial basis neural network method are used to optimize the impeller of a centrifugal compressor. The Latin-hypercube sampling of design-of-experiments is used to generate the thirty design points within design spaces. Three-dimensional Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations with the shear stress transport turbulence model are discretized by using finite volume approximations and solved on hexahedral grids to evaluate the objective function of the total-to-total pressure ratio. Four variables defining the impeller hub and shroud contours are selected as design variables in this optimization. The results of optimization show that the total-to-total pressure ratio of the optimized shape at the design flow coefficient is enhanced by 2.46% and the total-to-total pressure ratios at the off-design points are also improved significantly by the design optimization.

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In this paper, a numerical study has been carried out to investigate the influence of jet fan design variables on the performance of a jet fan. In order to achieve an optimum jet fan design and to explain the interactions between the different geometric configurations in the jet fan, three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics and the DOE method have been applied. Several geometric variables, i.e., hub-tip ratio, meridional shape, rotor stagger angle, number of rotor-stator blades and stator geometry, were employed to improve the performance of the jet fan. The objective functions are defined as the exit velocity and total efficiency at the operating condition. Based on the results of computational analyses, the performance of the jet fan was significantly improved. The performance degradations when the jet fan is operated in the reverse direction are also discussed.

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The attachment of inducer in front of main impeller is a powerful method to improve cavitation performance. Cavitation surge oscillation, however, often occurs at partial flow rate and extremely low suction pressure. As the cavitation surge oscillation with low frequency of about 10 Hz occurs in a close relation between the inlet backflow cavitation and the growth of blade cavity into the throat section of blade passage, one method of installing an axiasymmetrical plate upstream of inducer has been proposed to suppress the oscillation. The inlet flow distortion due to the axi-asymmetrical plate makes different elongations of cavities on all blades, which prevent the flow from becoming simultaneously unstable at all throat sections. In the present study, changes of the suppression effects with the axial distance between the inducer inlet and the plate and the changes with the blockage ratios of plate area to the cross-sectional area of inducer inlet are investigated for helical inducers with tip blade angles of 8° and 14°. Then a conceivable application will be proposed to suppress the cavitation surge oscillation by installing axi-asymmetrical inlet plate.

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A steam control valve is used to control the flow from the steam generator to the steam turbine in thermal and nuclear power plants. During startup and shutdown of the plant, the steam control valve is operated under a partial flow conditions. In such conditions, the valve opening is small and the pressure deference across the valve is large. As a result, the flow downstream of the valve is composed of separated unsteady transonic jets. Such flow patterns often cause undesirable large unsteady fluid force on the valve head and downstream pipe system. In the present study, various flow patterns are investigated in order to understand the characteristics of the unsteady flow around the valve. Experiments are carried out with simplified two-dimensional valve models. Two-dimensional unsteady flow simulations are conducted in order to understand the experimental results in detail. Scale effects on the flow characteristics are also examined. Results show three types of oscillating flow pattern and three types of static flow patterns.

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Severe flexural vibration of the rotor shaft of a Francis turbine runner was experienced in the past. It was shown that the vibration was caused by the fluid forces and moments on the backshroud of the runner associated with the leakage flow through the back chamber. The aim of the present paper is to study the self-excited rotor vibration caused by the fluid force moments on the backshroud of a Francis turbine runner. The rotor vibration includes two fundamental motions, one is a whirling motion which only has a linear displacement and the other is a precession motion which only has an angular displacement. Accordingly, two types of fluid force moment are exerted on the rotor, the moment due to whirl and the moment due to precession. The main focus of the present paper is to clarify the contribution of each moment to the self-excited vibration of an overhung rotor. The runner was modeled by a disk and the whirl and the precession moments on the backshroud of the runner caused by the leakage flow were evaluated from the results of model tests conducted before. A lumped parameter model of a cantilevered rotor was used for the vibration analysis. By examining the frequency, the damping rate, the amplitude ratio of lateral and angular displacements for the cases with longer and shorter overhung rotor, it was found that the precession moment is more important for smaller overhung rotors and the whirl moment is more important for larger overhung rotors, although both types of moment due to the leakage flow can cause self-excited vibration of an overhung rotor.

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The cavity oscillation with swirling flow in hydraulic power generating systems was studied by a simple experiment and numerical simulation. Several types of fluctuation were observed in the experiment, including the cavitation surge caused by the diffuser effect and the vortex precession by the swirling flow. Both cavitation surge and vortex precession were simulated by CFD. Detailed flow structure was examined through flow visualization and CFD.

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Based on the one-dimensional stability analysis, the self-excited oscillation in hydraulic power generating systems was studied by a simple experiment and numerical simulation. It was shown that a cavity in a conical diffuser can cause surge. With the diffuser, a high amplitude and low frequency oscillation occurs at low cavitation number. This oscillation was not observed with the straight pipe. It was confirmed that the diffuser effect of the draft tube can be the cause of the full load surge in hydraulic power system. Numerical results were also analyzed to check the validity of the one-dimensional stability analysis.

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