A Study of Trailing Edge Losses in Organic Rankine Cycle Turbines

Abstract

In this paper, vane trailingedge losses which occur in organic rankine cycle (ORC) turbines are investigated. Experiments are performed to study the influence of dense gas effects on trailingedge loss in supersonic flows using a novel Ludwieg tube facility for the study of densegas flows. The data is also used to validate a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) flow solver. The computational simulations are then used to determine the contributions to loss from shocks and viscous effects which occur at the vane trailing edge. The results show that dense gas effects play a vital role in the structure of the trailingedge flow, and control the extent of shock and viscous losses.