ROTOR CASING CONTOURING IN HIGH PRESSURE STAGES OF HEAVY DUTY GAS TURBINE COMPRESSORS WITH LARGE TIP CLEARANCE HEIGHTS

Abstract

Clearance leakage losses of axial compressor rotors and stators have a major impact on the overall compressor performance. The clearance heights in the last stages (high pressure stages) of a gas turbine compressor are very large in comparison to the low pressure stages due to mechanical constraints and small blade heights. The reduction of clearance leakage losses in a high pressure stage still holds an important potential for the overall performance improvement at design point conditions. In the following work, a method for tip clearance loss reduction by circumferential casing contouring above a high pressure stage rotor with a constant clearance height is presented. The subsonic compressor blade provides Siemens HPA-Family [1, 2, 3] airfoils. Starting over with a 3DOptimization of the mentioned rotor casing the work additionally refers to the aerodynamic effects and the off design performance of the optimized geometry. It has been found that an optimized casing and blade tip contour lead to a smaller overall clearance mass flow and lower pressure loss coefficient of the clearance flow so that the endwall blockage is reduced and the stage performance is improved by about 0.35% at design point conditions. Furthermore it was found that the performance improvement drops with increasing exit pressure to about 0.1% close to stall conditions. At lower exit pressure values the optimized geometry provides an additional performance improvement in comparison to the baseline configuration.