Large-Eddy Simulation of Flow and Convective Heat Transfer in a Gas Turbine Can Combustor With Synthetic Inlet Turbulence

Abstract

Large eddy simulations of swirling flow and the associated convective heat transfer in a gas turbine can combustor under cold flow conditions for Reynolds numbers of 50,000 and 80,000 with a characteristic Swirl number of 0.7 are carried out. A precursor Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) simulation is used to provide the inlet boundary conditions to the large-eddy simulation (LES) computational domain, which includes only the can combustor. A stochastic procedure based on the classical view of turbulence as a superposition of the coherent structures is used to simulate the turbulence at the inlet plane of the computational domain using the mean flow velocity and Reynolds stress data from the precursor RANS simulation. To further reduce the overall computational resource requirement and the total computational time, the near wall region is modeled using a zonal two layer model (WMLES). A novel formulation in the generalized co-ordinate system is used for the solution of effective tangential velocity and temperature in the inner layer virtual mesh. The WMLES predictions are compared with the experimental data of Patil et al. (2011, “Experimental and Numerical Investigation of Convective Heat Transfer in Gas Turbine Can Combustor,” ASME J. Turbomach., 133 (1), p. 011028) for the local heat transfer distribution on the combustor liner wall obtained using robust infrared thermography technique. The heat transfer coefficient distribution on the liner wall predicted from the WMLES is in good agreement with experimental values. The location and the magnitude of the peak heat transfer are predicted in very close agreement with the experiments.