Application of a Fast Loosely Coupled Fluid/Solid Heat Transfer Method to the Transient Analysis of Low-Pressure-Turbine Disk Cavities

A transient aero-thermal analysis of the disk cavities of an aero-engine LPT (Low Pressure Turbine) is presented. The full simulation includes a 2D thermal model of the solid parts combined with an axisymmetric flow model of six separate cavities interconnected through inlet and outlet boundaries. Computing elapsed time is significantly reduced by using a cluster of GPUs (Graphics Processing Units) making this approach compatible with turbine design time-frames. The problem of flow reversal that takes place in some of the cavity boundaries along the transient flight cycle is addressed in detail. The fully coupled numerical solution is validated against engine data and compared as well against an uncoupled simulation. It is shown that the coupled solution outperforms the uncoupled one in terms of accuracy, since it removes some hypotheses inherent to the uncoupled approach. It is believed that this is the first time that GPUs have been used to solve a fully coupled fluid/solid thermal problem of industrial interest for the gas turbine community.© 2013 ASME