Evaluation of Unsteady Computational Fluid Dynamics Models Applied to the Analysis of a Transonic High-Pressure Turbine Stage

This paper presents an efficient ‘Phase-Lagged’ method developed for turbomachinery applications. The method is based on the generalized-shape-correction model. Moving average techniques as well as double-passage domain formulation were adopted in order to reduce memory requirements and improve the model robustness. The model was used to evaluate the aerodynamic performance of the high-pressure transonic turbine stage CT3, experimentally studied at the von Kármán Institute for Fluid Dynamics in the framework of the EU funded TATEF2 project. The results are discussed and compared with both the available experimental data and the results obtained by means of both steady and unsteady scaled full-annulus approaches. Computational requirements of the generalized-shape-correction model are evaluated and discussed showing that nowadays unsteady results can be obtained at an affordable computational cost.