The process of wet compression in an axial compressor is an intricate two-phase flow involving not only heat and mass transfer processes but also droplet breakup and even formation of discontinuous water film on the blade surface and then breaking into droplets. In this paper, the droplet-wall interactions are analyzed using the theory of spray wall impingement through two computational models for an isolated transonic compressor rotor (NASA rotor 37). Model 1, representing spread phenomenon, assumes that all droplets impacting on the blade are trapped in the water film and subsequently released from its trailing edge and enter the wake region with an equivalent mass flow but bigger in diameter and smaller in number. Whereas, the model 2, representing splashing phenomenon, assumes that upon impacting on the blade, the droplets will breakup into many smaller ones. The three-dimensional flow simulation results of these two models are analyzed and compared in this paper.

The rotor blade tip leakage flow and associated formation of the tip leakage vortex and interaction of the tip leakage vortex with the shockwave, particularly in the case of a transonic compressor rotor have significant impact on the compressor performance and its stability. Air injection upstream of the compressor rotor tip has been shown to improve compressor performance and enhance its stability. The air required for rotor blade tip injection is generally taken from the later stages of the compressor thus causing penalty on the gas turbine performance. In this study, effects of water injection at the rotor tip with and without the wet compression on the compressor performance and its stability have been examined. To achieve the stated objectives, the well tested transonic compressor rotor stage, NASA rotor stage 37, has been numerically simulated. The evaluation of results on various performance parameters, such as total pressure ratio, inlet flow capacity, and adiabatic efficiency combined with contours of total pressure losses, entropy, Mach number, and temperature including limiting streamlines, shows that the blade tip water injection could help in reducing low energy region downstream of the shockwave and strength of the tip leakage vortex with the compressor operating at its rotating stall boundary condition. The extent of reduction depends on the droplet size, injection flow rate, and its velocity. Furthermore, results show that combined case of the blade tip water injection and the wet compression could provide better stall margin enhancement than the blade tip water injection case.

In this paper, a thorough flow simulation of a small turbojet engine has been carried out to predict the engine performance as a result of water injected at the compressor inlet. Wet compression will not only change compressor performance characteristic map, but also has effects on both the combustor and the turbine sections. The match between the turbojet engine components, that is the compressor, combustor and turbine, will shift to a new operating point. In this paper, we present a steady-state numerical simulation of the entire gas turbine with wet compression in order to evaluate the effects on the gas turbine performance. Compared with the dry case, the results of wet cases show increased values of compressor compression ratios, turbine expansion ratios, intake mass flowrates, and engine thrusts including a decreased amount of specific fuel consumption. The wet compression reduces NO_x production in the combustor, which is also simulated and with results presented. The study also indicates that the water mass flow rate and droplet diameter are key factors impacting the engine performance.

In this article, a compound unit of swirl and impingement cooling techniques is designed to study the performance of flow and heat transfer using multi-conical nozzles in a leading-edge of a gas turbine blade. Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes equations and the Shear Stress Transport model are numerically solved under different nozzle Reynolds numbers and temperature ratios. Results indicated that the compound cooling unit could achieve a 99.7% increase in heat transfer enhancement by increasing the nozzle Reynolds number from 10,000 to 25,000 at a constant temperature ratio. Also, there is an 11% increase in the overall Nusselt number when the temperature ratio increases from 0.65 to 0.95 at identical nozzle Reynolds number. At 10,000 and 15,000 of nozzle Reynolds numbers, the compound cooling unit achieves 47.9% and 39.8% increases and 63.5% and 66.3% increases in the overall Nusselt number comparing with the available experimental swirl and impingement models, respectively. A correlation for the overall Nusselt number is derived as a function of nozzle Reynolds number and temperature ratio to optimize the results. The current study concluded that the extremely high zones and uniform distribution of heat transfer are perfectly achieved with regard to the characteristics of heat transfer of the compound cooling unit.