Numerical Investigation of Fluid Flow Parameters in a Combustor Simulator

In recent years computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is substantially employed in the design process of gas turbines. To increase the performance of the turbines an efficient cooling system design is essential. This is largely dependent on the accuracy of the predicted temperature at the exit of the combustor. Lack of accuracy of the predicted temperature at the combustor-turbine interface results in using large safety factors which affect the performance negatively. It is believed that the RANS methods are incapable of predicting the mixing process in highly swirling flows in the combustors. In this study the flow in a none-reactive model combustor simulator is investigated numerically using RANS, SAS and LES turbulence models in ANSYS CFX code. The model combustor consists of three swirling mixers through which the hot air passes. The cold air that goes through many small effusion holes of the outer and inner liners mixes up with the swirling hot air. The computational domain however consists only of one sector and periodic boundary condition is applied in the circumferential direction. The numerical results are compared with the experimental results that are provided by the University of Florence as part of the European FACTOR project. It is confirmed that the RANS or URANS methods are not capable of reproducing the experimental results.