Design and Off-Design Optimization of a Low Pressure Steam Turbine Radial Diffuser Using an Evolutionary Algorithm and 3D CFD

The diffuser and exhaust of low pressure steam turbines show significant impact on the overall turbine performance. The amount of recovered enthalpy leads to a considerable increase of the turbine power output, and therefore a continuous focus of turbine manufacturers is put on this component. On the one hand, the abilities to aerodynamically design such components are improved, but on the other hand a huge effort is required to properly predict the resulting performance and to enable an accurate modeling of the overall steam turbine and therewith plant heat rate. A wide range of approaches is used to compute the diffuser and exhaust flow, with a wide range of quality. Today, it is well known and understood that there is a strong interaction of rear stage and diffuser flow, and the accuracy of the overall diffuser performance prediction strongly depends on a proper coupling of both domains. The most accurate, but also most expensive method is currently seen in a full annulus and transient coupling. However, for a standard industrial application of diffuser design in a standard development schedule, such a coupling is not feasible and more simplified methods have to be developed. The paper below presents a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling of low pressure steam turbine diffusers and exhausts based on a direct coupling of the rear stage and diffuser using a novel multiple mixing plane (MMP). It is shown that the approach enables a fast diffuser design process and is still able to accurately predict the flow field and hence the exhaust performance. The method is validated against several turbine designs measured in a scaled low pressure turbine model test rig using steam. The results show a very good agreement of the presented CFD modeling against the measurements.

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Performance Prediction and Optimization of Low Pressure Steam Turbine Radial Diffuser at Design and Off-Design Conditions Using Streamline Curvature Method

Zhang¹,

Congiu²,

Gan³

et al. 2017

Journal of Engineering for Gas Turbines and Power

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The performance of the radial diffuser of a low pressure (LP) steam turbine is important to the power output of the turbine. A reliable and robust prediction and optimization tool is desirable in industry for preliminary design and performance evaluation. This is particularly critical during the tendering phase of retrofit projects, which typically cover a wide range of original equipment manufacturer and other original equipment manufacturers designs. This work describes a fast and reliable numerical approach for the simulation of flow in the last stage and radial diffuser coupled with the exhaust hood. The numerical solver is based on a streamline curvature throughflow method and a geometry-modification treatment has been developed for off-design conditions, at which large-scale flow separation may occur in the diffuser domain causing convergence difficulty. To take into account the effect of tip leakage jet flow, a boundary layer solver is coupled with the throughflow calculation to predict flow separation on the diffuser lip. The performance of the downstream exhaust hood is modeled by a hood loss model (HLM) that accounts for various loss generations along the flow paths. Furthermore, the solver is implemented in an optimization process. Both the diffuser lip and hub profiles can be quickly optimized, together or separately, to improve the design in the early tender phase. 3D computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations are used to validate the solver and the optimization process. The results show that the current method predicts the diffuser/exhaust hood performance within good agreement with the CFD calculation and the optimized diffuser profile improves the diffuser recovery over the datum design. The tool provides General Electric the capability to rapidly optimize and customize retrofit diffusers for each customer considering different constraints.

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Design and Off-Design Optimization of a Low Pressure Steam Turbine Radial Diffuser Using an Evolutionary Algorithm and 3D CFD

Cited by 5 publications

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Investigation on low-pressure steam turbine exhaust hood modelling through computational fluid dynamic simulations

Investigation on low-pressure steam turbine exhaust hood modelling through computational fluid dynamic simulations

Computational Fluid Dynamics Modeling of Low Pressure Steam Turbine Radial Diffuser Flow by Using a Novel Multiple Mixing Plane Based Coupling—Simulation and Validation

Performance Prediction and Optimization of Low Pressure Steam Turbine Radial Diffuser at Design and Off-Design Conditions Using Streamline Curvature Method

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