Numerical Investigation of Effect of Geometry Changes in a Model Combustor on Swirl Dominated Flow and Heat Transfer

Numerical computations are performed on three configurations of a model gas turbine combustor geometry for cold flow conditions. The purpose of this study is to understand the effect of changes to combustor passage section on the location of peak convective heat transfer along the combustor liner. A Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes equations based turbulence model is used for all the numerical computations. Simulations are performed on a 3D sector geometry. The first geometry is a straight cylindrical combustor section. The second model has an upstream diverging section before the cylindrical section. Third one has a converging section following the upstream cylindrical section. The inlet air flow has a Reynolds number of 50000 and a swirl number of 0.7. The combustor liner is subjected to a constant heat flux. Finally, liner heat transfer characteristics for the three geometries are compared. It is found that the peak liner heat transfer occurs far downstream of the combustor for full cylinder and downstream convergent cases compared to that in the upstream divergent case. This behavior may be attributed to the resultant pressure distribution due to the combustor passage area changes. Also the magnitude of peak liner heat transfer is reduced for the former two cases since the high turbulent kinetic energy regions within the combustor are oriented axially instead of expanding radially outward. As a consequence, the thermal load on the liner is found to reduce.