To understand the physics of volcanic ash impact on gas turbine hot-components and develop much-needed tools for engine design and fleet management, the behaviors of volcanic ash in a gas turbine combustor and nozzle guide vanes (NGV) have been numerically investigated. High-fidelity numerical models are generated, and volcanic ash sample, physical, and thermal properties are identified. A simple critical particle viscosity—critical wall temperature model is proposed and implemented in all simulations to account for ash particles bouncing off or sticking on metal walls. The results indicate that due to the particle inertia and combustor geometry, the volcanic ash concentration in the NGV cooling passage generally increases with ash size and density, and is less sensitive to inlet velocity. It can reach three times as high as that at the air inlet for the engine conditions and ash properties investigated. More importantly, a large number of the ash particles entering the NGV cooling chamber are trapped in the cooling flow passage for all four turbine inlet temperature conditions. This may reveal another volcanic ash damage mechanism originated from engine cooling flow passage. Finally, some suggestions are recommended for further research and development in this challenging field. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first study on detailed ash behaviors inside practical gas turbine hot-components in the open literature.

Based on the previous benchmark studies on combustion, scalar transfer, and radiation models, a critical evaluation of turbulence models in a propane-air diffusion flame combustor with interior and exterior conjugate heat transfers has been performed. Results obtained from six turbulence models are presented and compared in detail with a comprehensive database obtained from a series of experimental measurements. It is found that the Reynolds stress model (RSM), a second moment closure, is superior over the five popular eddy-viscosity two-equation models. Although the main flow patterns are captured by all six turbulence models, only the RSM is able to successfully predict the lengths of both recirculation zones and give fairly accurate predictions for mean velocity, temperature, CO₂ and CO mole fractions, as well as turbulence kinetic energy in the combustor chamber. In addition, the realizable k-ε (Rk-ε) model illustrates better performance than four other two-equation models and can provide comparable results to those from the RSM for the configuration and operating conditions considered in the present study.

Turbulence modelling is a major issue, affecting the precision of current numerical simulations, particularly for reacting flows. The RANS (Reynolds‐averaged Navier‐Stokes) modelling of turbulence is necessary in the development of advanced combustion systems in the foreseeable future. Therefore, it is important to understand advantages and limitations of these models. In this chapter, six widely used RANS turbulence models are discussed and validated against a comprehensive experimental database from a model combustor. The results indicate that all six models can catch the flow features; however, various degrees of agreement with the experimental data are found. The Reynolds stress model (RSM) gives the best performance, and the Rk‐ε model can provide similar predictions as those from the RSM. The Reynolds analogy used in almost all turbulent reacting flow simulations is also assessed in this chapter and validated against the experimental data. It is found that the turbulent Prandtl/Schmidt number has a significant effect on the temperature field in the combustor. In contrast, its effect on the velocity field is insignificant in the range considered (0.2–0.85). For the present configuration and operating conditions, the optimal turbulent Prandtl/Schmidt number is 0.5, lower than the traditionally used value of 0.6–0.85.

The aircraft engine hot section is most vulnerable and failure prone to environmental particle ingestion, which, particularly for helicopters, can cause detrimental effects ranging from reduced performance to complete engine failure. The objective of this work is to develop an analytical tool to assess environmental particle impact on engine hot sections. The current state of the art in experimental and analytical research on environmental particle ingestion related to engine hot sections was reviewed, with emphasis on sand particles. From these efforts, the available experimental data for model calibration were identified, and an innovative particle rebound/deposition model has been developed. A semi-empirical approach is selected to model particles bouncing off metal surfaces, where the coefficients of restitution measured in a temperature range of 297–1323 K are used to calculate particle bounce-back velocity components. The developed deposition model is based on non-dimensional parameter analysis over more than seventy experiments related to particle deposition in engine hot sections. The metal surface temperature, one of two critical parameters in particle deposition, is also included in the model. The model was successfully implemented into commercial software and checked step by step. It was calibrated by two cases: sand [Arizona road dust (ARD)] particle impingement on a circular plate and Mt. St. Helens volcanic ash impinging on a first-stage air-cooled nozzle guide vane (NGV). For the former case, the calibrated model predicts fairly well the variation of particle deposition rate with flow/particle temperature. The latter case indicates that the particle deposition rate at engine operating conditions can be assessed by the developed model. Due to the lack of experimental data that would permit a full calibration/validation, for the time being the model can be only used under limited conditions. As additional relevant experimental data appears, the model will be continuously improved.

Based on erosion coupon tests, a sand erosion model for 17-4PH steel was developed. The developed erosion model was validated against the results of compressor erosion tests from a generic rig and from other researchers. A high-fidelity computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model of the test rig was built, a user-defined function was developed to implement the erosion model into the ANSYS CFD software, and the turbulent, two-phase flow-field in multiple reference frames was solved. The simulation results are consistent with the test results from the compressor rig and with experimental findings from other researchers. Specifically, the sand erosion blunts the leading edge, sharpens the trailing edge and increases pressure-surface roughness. The comparisons between the experimental observations and numerical results as well as a quantitative comparison with three other sand erosion models indicate that the developed sand erosion model is adequate for erosion prediction of engine components made of 17-4PH steel.

A practical method to evaluate quantitatively the uniformity of fuel/air mixing is essential for research and development of advanced low-emission combustion systems. Typically, this is characterised by measuring an unmixedness parameter or a uniformity index. An alternative approach, based on the fuel/air equivalence ratio distribution, is proposed and demonstrated in a simple methane/air venturi mixer. This approach has two main advantages: it is correlated with the fuel/air mixture combustion temperature, and the maximum temperature variation caused by fuel/air non-uniformity can be estimated. Because of these, it can be used as a criterion to check fuel/air mixing quality, or as a target for fuel/air mixer design with acceptable maximum temperature variation. For the situations where the fuel/air distribution non-uniqueness issue becomes important for fuel/air mixing check or mixer design, an additional statistical supplementary criterion should also be used.