Aerodynamic investigation of guide vane configurations downstream a rotating detonation combustor

Abstract

Any outlet restriction downstream of Pressure Gain Combustion (PGC), such as turbine blades, affects its flow field and may cause additional thermodynamic losses. The unsteadiness in the form of pressure, temperature and velocity vector fluctuations has a negative impact on the operation of conventional turbines. Additionally, experimental measurements and data acquisition present researchers with challenges that have to do mostly with the high temperature exhaust of PGC and the high frequency of its operation. Nevertheless, numerical simulations can provide important insights into PGC exhaust flow and its interaction with turbine blades. In this paper, a Rotating Detonation Combustor (RDC) and a row of nozzle guide vanes have been modeled based on the data from literature and an available experimental setup. URANS simulations were done for five guide vane configurations with different geometrical parameters to investigate the effect of solidity and blade type representing different outlet restrictions on the RDC exhaust flow. The results analyzed the connection between total pressure loss and the vanes solidity and thickness to chord ratio. It is observed that more than 57% of the upstream velocity angle fluctuation amplitude was damped by the vanes. Furthermore, the area reduction was found to be the significant driving factor for damping the velocity angle fluctuations, whether in the form of solidity or thickness on chord ratio increment. This RDC exhaust flow investigation is an important primary step from a turbomachinery standpoint, which provided details of blade behavior in such an unsteady flow field.