Specific Features of the Vortex Flow Patterns in the Vicinity of a Single-Knife-Edge Tip Shroud
<sec> —Modern gas turbines have high efficiency. A further increase in their economic efficiency can be achieved, on the one hand, by enhancing the accuracy of the parameter prediction at the design stage and, on the other hand, by the possibility of improving the design for different components of the flow path based on the results of calculating the complicated viscous spatial structure of the flow. One of the tools for enhancing the efficiency of gas turbines is the minimization of the rotor-tip leakage, the rate of which is reduced by shrouding the rotor blades. In particular, using numerical methods and software tools based on the former, one can perform thorough computational analysis of the vortex structure of the flow in the vicinity of the tip shroud and sufficiently accurately determine the rotor-tip leakage rates and other parameters of the stage. Such an approach allows a more accurate assessment of the leakage than semiempirical approaches used in practice. In particular, the assessment by the correlation dependence showed that the leakage rate for the tip shroud design in question with a tip clearance of 5 mm exceeded the leakage rate calculated using the method that considers the specific features of the tip shroud design and the vortex structure of the flow in the vicinity of it by 8.65%. As exemplified by the last-stage rotor blade of a stationary gas turbine, the possibility of controlling the leakage of the main flow through the tip clearance is demonstrated based on results of a numerical experiment. </sec>