As you have probably heard, in January of this year, ANSYS 16.0 was released with a full set of new features and exciting enhancements covering our entire simulation portfolio (see more here). But in this blog, I would like to tell you a little more about turbomachinery blade row flow modeling capability in ANSYS 16.0.
Transient blade row (TBR) simulation is an important analysis and design tool, enabling turbomachinery designers to reliably improve the performance and predict the durability of rotating machinery. Traditional transient simulation methods are expensive since it requires simulation of all blades in the full 360 degrees to accurately account for the pitch difference between adjacent blade rows. However, ANSYS CFX pitch-change methods resolve this challenge by providing time accurate unsteady turbomachinery flow simulations on just a small sector of the machine annulus (typically simulating only one or a few blades, a reduced blade row model), thus tremendously reducing computing cost resources and and reducing the overall time to obtain the simulation.
The ANSYS CFX TBR methods with pitch-change in release 16.0 accurately predict the strong aerodynamic interaction of modern turbomachines, including gas compressors & turbines, water turbines, pumps, and other machines. In ANSYS 16.0, many turbomachinery configurations can be modeled efficiently including axial or radial, large pitch or small pitch, single or multistage. This is all possible thanks to the wide range of pitch-change methods in ANSYS CFX 16.0.
Turbomachinery designers must ensure safe operation of turbomachines free of disastrous vibration (flutter) or high-cycle fatigue (HCF) failures across the full operating range of the machine. ANSYS 16.0 accomplishes this goal with two types of multiphysics simulations namely, blade flutter and forced response analysis. The seamless integration between ANSYS Mechanical and ANSYS CFX allows rapid aerodynamic damping predictions to determine if the rotor blades are aerodynamically damped or self-excited (i.e. fluttering) when vibrating at their natural frequencies. In addition, forced-response analysis examines how the blades respond (i.e. displacement, stresses and strains computed in ANSYS Mechanical) as they are subjected to strong wakes and other interactions from surrounding blade rows (computed in ANSYS CFX). In fact, in ANSYS 16.0 the effect of blade variation due to manufacturing tolerances or due to wear and tear can even be accounted for in a “mistuned” forced-response analysis using only a small sector of the machine.
The transient blade row methods in ANSYS CFX 16 also allow for accurate aerothermodynamic prediction of turbine flows. Accurate prediction of temperature distribution is essential for designing better blade cooling systems and preventing catastrophic failure of blades. It is now possible to accurately account for pitch-change while predicting the maximum and minimum turbine blade surface temperature, modeling hot streak migration and transient conjugate heat transfer (CHT), as well as obtaining accurate aerodynamic performance, all within a single transient blade row simulation.
ANSYS 16.0 provides turbomachinery designers with an industry leading range of transient blade row simulation technologies for fast and efficient aerodynamic, aeromechanical and aerothermodynamic analysis on various turbomachinery configurations. Moreover, there has been significant usability improvements such as: a powerful way of monitoring the convergence of transient periodic solutions and accurate Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) analysis tool, to name a few.
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