Prototyping of Small-sized Two-dimensional Radial Turbines

Small-sized 2D and 3D radial turbines are designed, fabricated and their aerodynamic performance is experimentally measured. Also, with numerical simulation, major loss-generating factors are investigated. Adiabatic efficiencies of the developed 2D radial turbines are very low when compared to those of the developed 3D turbines. The reduction of efficiency can be mainly attributed to exducers, nozzle wake regions and rotor blades’ surfaces. Using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) results, loss characteristics of 2D turbines and design philosophy required for developing efficient 2D turbines are discussed.