The operational flexibility of steam power plant is becoming more important as power generation becomes increasingly decentralized, with a growing contribution from renewable energy sources. In a power plant the control valve is a key component to guarantee the control of the plant of which is increasingly demanded to extend the operational capability. At specific operating conditions, the control valve could experience vibrations. In this paper, the physical phenomena of the unsteady aerodynamic excitation force have been investigated by means of CFD techniques. An in-house code was used to simulate the flow-induced vibration. Unsteady transonic 3D simulation generally requires huge computational effort. A novel unsteady quasi-3D approach has been developed and applied as pre-design tool to establish the qualitatively operational map of the valve and to detect the critical operational range, to reduce the number of detailed 3D simulations. The numerical results are compared with experimental test undertaken in the Central Research Institute of Electric Power Industry [4] and full 3D simulation performed with the commercial tool CFX, using the Scale-Adaptive Simulation (SaS) turbulence model. Different pressure drops at certain lift have been selected from the operational map and reproduced numerically. Different modes have been identified, from stochastic behavior with wide width of frequency to periodic flow with one dominant frequency. Results indicate good agreement between the predicted frequency and amplitude and benchmark experiments. The quasi-3D simulation is able to reproduce the principle behavior of the flow field for different drop of pressure and capture the different operational mode. Similar behaviour has been detected also for the selected operating condition in the full 3D analysis. In addition, flutter calculation of the downstream pipe is carried out. It has demonstrated that the implementation of oscillating discharge piping influences the amplitudes and frequency of the upstream flow region.

In this article, a fully three-dimensional computational modeling approach in the time and frequency domain is presented, which allows to accurately predicting fluid-structure interactions in pulse-charged mixed-flow turbocharger turbines. As part of the approach, a transient computational fluid mechanics analysis is performed based on the compressible inviscid Euler equations covering an entire engine cycle. The resulting harmonic orders of aerodynamic excitation are imposed in a forced response analysis of the respective eigenvector to determine effective stress amplitudes. The modeling approach is validated with experimental results based on various mixed-flow turbine designs. It is shown that the numerical results accurately predict the measured stress levels. The numerical approach can be used in the turbine design and optimization process. Aerodynamic excitation forces are the main reason for high cycle fatigue in turbocharger turbines and therefore a fundamental understanding is of key importance.

In this article, a fully three-dimensional computational modeling approach in the time and frequency domain is presented which allows to accurately predicting fluid-structure interactions (FSI) in pulse-charged mixed-flow turbocharger turbines. As part of the approach, a transient computational fluid mechanics analysis is performed based on the compressible inviscid Euler equations covering an entire engine cycle. The resulting harmonic orders of aerodynamic excitation are imposed in a forced response analysis of the respective eigenvector to determine effective stress amplitudes. The modeling approach is validated with experimental results based on various mixed-flow turbine designs. It is shown that the numerical results accurately predict the measured stress levels. The numerical approach can be used in the turbine design and optimization process. Aerodynamic excitation forces are the main reason for high cycle fatigue in turbocharger turbines and therefore, a fundamental understanding is of key importance.