State-of-the-Art Throughflow Analysis of Multistage Turbines by Exploiting CFD Methods

Martina Ricci - Dipartimento di Ingegneria Industriale Università di Firenze

Roberto Pacciani, Dipartimento di Ingegneria Industriale Università di Firenze
Michele Marconcini, Dipartimento di Ingegneria Industriale Università di Firenze
Andrea Arnone, Dipartimento di Ingegneria Industriale Università di Firenze

Despite the growing consolidation of 3D CFD approaches in industrial design practices, CFD-based throughflow codes are increasingly seen as fundamental and credible tools for aerodynamic analysis, with short turnaround times. The present paper retraces the development and some applications of a modern and complete CFD-based throughflow solver particularly suitable for multistage axial turbines. Its capabilities are demonstrated by discussing and comparing results with the experimental data available, for a significant range of test cases. A good agreement in terms of overall performance and spanwise distributions is achieved in both design and off-design operating conditions.