FLOW IN A ROTATING CAVITY WITH A PERIPHERAL INLET AND OUTLET OF COOLING AIR

In some engines, corotating gas–turbine discs are cooled by air introduced at the periphery of the system. The air enters through holes in a stationary peripheral casing and leaves through the rim seals between the casing and the discs. This paper describes a combined computational and experimental study of such a system for a range of flowrates and for rotational Reynolds numbers of up to Reϕ = 1.5 × 106. Computations are made using an axisymmetric elliptic solver, incorporating the Launder–Sharma low–Reynolds–number k–e turbulence model, and velocity measurements are obtained using laser–Doppler anemometry.The stationary peripheral casing creates a recirculation region: there is radial outflow in boundary layers on the discs and inflow in the core between the boundary layers. The radial extent of the recirculation region increases as the flow rate increases and as the rotational speed decreases. In the core, the radial and tangential components of velocity, Vr and Vϕ, are invariant in the axial direction, and the measured values of Vϕ conform to a Rankine–vortex flow. The agreement between the computed and measured velocities is not as good as that found for other rotating–disc systems, and deficiencies in the turbulence model are believed to be responsible.© 1996 ASME