A Numerical Study on a Supersonic Turbine Performance Characteristics with Different Nozzle-Rotor Axial Gap Spacings

Abstract

In this study, 3-dimensional URANS simulation was performed to analyze the effect of the nozzle-rotor axial gap spacing of a supersonic impulse turbine on turbine performance. The computations were conducted for four different axial gap cases corresponding to about 6%, 10%, 20% and 30% of the blade height, respectively. The results show a good agreement with previous studies and the turbine efficiency decreases drastically in certain range. It is examined that the turbine performance characteristics could change depending on the influence of leading edge shock to the nozzle outlet. It is also found that the entropy rise distributions along the span differ from each other.