Investigation of the ventilation flow in a gas turbine package enclosure

Abstract

The ventilation flow of a gas turbine enclosure was investigated both experimentally and numerically in a scaled test rig. Its gas turbine components were inactive and mainly functioned as flow obstructions. Measurements were used to provide realistic boundary conditions and verification data for URANS CFD investigations. In the test rig the active generator cooling flow was created by several fans, modelled by momentum sources in the CFD. Two different modelling approaches were compared to PIV data. The modelling of the ventilation flow was found to impact flow regions nearby the generator but also far downstream with one method showing better agreement with the experiment. Examining the flow predicted by the chosen CFD model, no relevant backflow from the engine to the upstream gear section could be observed. Therefore, the investigation of stagnation regions was focused on the engine section to identify worst case leakage configurations for future investigations.