The Impact of Volute Aspect Ratio on the Performance of a Mixed Flow Turbine
1
Turbocharger Research Institute, University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield HD1 3DH, UK
2
BorgWarner Turbo Systems, Bradford BD4 6SE, UK
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Aerospace 2017, 4(4), 56; https://doi.org/10.3390/aerospace4040056
Received: 27 October 2017 / Revised: 16 November 2017 / Accepted: 20 November 2017 / Published: 23 November 2017
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Feature Papers in Aerospace)
Current trends in the automotive industry towards engine downsizing mean turbocharging now plays a vital role in engine performance. A turbocharger increases charge air density using a turbine to extract waste energy from the exhaust gas to drive a compressor. Most turbocharger applications employ a radial inflow turbine. However, mixed flow turbines can offer non-zero blade angles, reducing leading edge (LE) separation at low velocity ratios. The current paper investigates the performance of a mixed flow turbine with three different volute aspect ratio (AR) designs (AR = 0.5, 1 and 2). With constant A/r (ratio of volute area to centroid radius), the AR = 0.5 volute design produced a 4.3% increase in cycle averaged mass flow parameter (MFP) compared to the AR = 2 design. For the purpose of performance comparison, it was necessary to manipulate the volute A/r’s to ensure constant MFP for aerodynamic similarity. With the volute A/r’s manipulated to ensure constant MFP for aerodynamic similarity, the maximum variation of cycle averaged normalized efficiency measured between the designs was 1.47%. Purely in the rotor region, the variation in normalized cycle averaged efficiency was 1%. The smallest tested volute aspect ratio showed a significant increase in volute loss while the ARs of 1 and 2 showed similar levels of loss. The smallest AR volute showed significant secondary flow development in the volute. The resulting variation in LE incidence was found to vary as a result.
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Keywords:
fluid dynamics; mixed flow turbine; secondary flows; dean vortices; computational fluid dynamics
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MDPI and ACS Style
Lee, S.P.; Barrans, S.M.; Jupp, M.L.; Nickson, A.K. The Impact of Volute Aspect Ratio on the Performance of a Mixed Flow Turbine. Aerospace 2017, 4, 56. https://doi.org/10.3390/aerospace4040056
AMA Style
Lee SP, Barrans SM, Jupp ML, Nickson AK. The Impact of Volute Aspect Ratio on the Performance of a Mixed Flow Turbine. Aerospace. 2017; 4(4):56. https://doi.org/10.3390/aerospace4040056
Chicago/Turabian StyleLee, Samuel P.; Barrans, Simon M.; Jupp, Martyn L.; Nickson, Ambrose K. 2017. "The Impact of Volute Aspect Ratio on the Performance of a Mixed Flow Turbine" Aerospace 4, no. 4: 56. https://doi.org/10.3390/aerospace4040056
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