In the past, steam turbines were mostly used for base load operation. Nowadays, with the increased development of variable renewable technologies, these same steam turbines are withstanding higher cyclic operational regimes with more frequent start-ups and fast changing loads. As such, improving the operational flexibility of installed and future designed steam turbines is a key aspect to be considered by equipment manufacturers. Steam turbine start-up is a phase of particular interest since is considered to be the most intricate of transient operations. During this phase, the machine can potentially be subjected to excessive thermal stresses and axial rubbing due to differential thermal expansion. These two thermal phenomena either consume component lifetime or can lead to machine failure if not carefully controlled. As such, there is a balance to be considered between increasing turbine start-up speed while ensuring the safe operation and life preservation of these machines. In order to improve the transient operation of steam turbines, it becomes important to examine their thermal behavior during start-up operation. To do that, it is important to have tools able to predict the thermal response of the machine. In this thesis work the impact of different aspects and boundary conditions on the results of ST3M, a KTH in-house tool, were investigated with the aim of understanding how large was their impact on the way to capture the thermal behavior of the turbine in terms of metal temperature and differential expansion. A small industrial high pressure turbine was validated against measured data and implemented on a sensitivity study; this analysis showed that the geometrical approximation introduce errors in the results, that the use of empirical Nusselt correlations give similar results to the validated model and that the cavity assumptions have a large impact on the trend of the differential expansion. Lastly, a strategy to validate any other similar turbine to the one of the study case was proposed in order to give a guide to future works in how to validate a model and what are the most influent parameters to take care of.

The growing shares of renewable energy sources in the market and solar thermal power applications have set higher requirements on steam turbine operation.These requirements are related to flexibility during transients. A key aspect sought of such flexibility is the capability for fast starts. Due to the varying temperature gradients during start-up, the speed at which the turbine can start is constrained by thermal stresses and differential expansion. These phenomena either consume component lifetime or may result in machine failure if not carefully controlled. In order to accomplish faster starts while ensuring that lifing requirements are preserved, it is important to analyze the thermal behavior of the machine. For this, a transient thermal model was developed with a focus on adaptability to different turbine sizes and geometries. The model allows for simple and fast prediction of thermo-mechanical properties within the turbine metal, more importantly, of the temperature distribution and the associated thermal expansion. The next step of this work was to validate the assumptions and simplifications of the model. This was done through the study and comparison of two turbines against measured operational data from their respective power plants. Furthermore,validation studies also included comparisons concerning the geometric detail level of the model. Overall, comparison results showed a large degree of agreement with respect to the measured data and between the geometric detail levels. The validated model was then implemented in studies related to reducing start-up times and peak differential expansion. For this, the potential effects of turbine temperature maintaining modifications were investigated and quantified.The modifications studied included: increasing gland steam pressure, increasing back pressure and increasing barring speed. Results yielded significant improvements starting from 9.5% in the start-up times and 7% in the differential expansion. / <p>QC 20141128</p>

The impinging solar receiver, bearing the merits of high heat transfer coefficient and compact structure, has a great potential in the field of solar dish Brayton system. Despite the wide application of cylindrical structure in the impinging solar receiver, the research on orifice array optimization against curvature surfaces is rare.In this paper, the main objective is to study the heat transfer and pressure drop characteristics of an orifice impinging array under a constant mass flow rate and a constant surface temperature boundary condition for the future impinging receiver design. Various orifice shapes were studied via numerical tools (Ansys Fluent 14.0) and their performances in both pressure drop and heat transfer coefficient were compared. The upstream fillet orifice was found to have the lowest pressure drop with moderate compromise in heat transfer coefficient. Moreover, a mathematical optimization model, based on empirical correlations, was developed for the orifice impinging array on the convex cylindrical surfaces. This model can provide an appropriate range of orifice number and orifice diameter, from which the key factors of the array including the ratio of height and orifice diameter H/D, orifice interval, number of orifices in each tier circumferential and tier numbers can be calculated. Several validation cases were also conducted by Ansys Fluent.

For modeling thermal heat transfer, not only the effects of convection and conduction are relevant, but also thermal and visible radiation. Radiation is especially important for setups with large temperature differences, as well as for interaction with external light sources.Common computational fluid dynamic models usually treat radiation transport as a minor effect, that can be handled by simplified algorithms. All these normal models, e.g. surface to surface model, discrete transfer model, P_N method, discrete ordinates model, exhibit disadvantages in the computing performance and the physical modeling. Hence, there are many technical applications, where the fluid simulation are limited both in accuracy and calculation time by the available radiation model. As exemplary cases combustion chambers, smoke and soot creation, solar power generation, UV water disinfection, condensation in car headlights, fusion and fission reactor chambers, electric arc movement, as well as low-emissivity glass windows can be named. In the fields investigating radiation as main effect, e.g. cinematic 3d animation or illumination simulation for lamps and workspaces, the mentioned methods are not in use anymore as ray tracing is the first choice. In this work, the existing methods for ray tracing were adapted and implemented with the goal to interact with fluid flow simulations and replace existing radiation modeling. This can be regarded as innovative, interdisciplinary method for the interaction of fluids and solids with radiation, incorporating physical effects that could not be included in previous simulations. While in usual light calculations, the geometry exists solely in the form of surfaces and their triangulation, fluid flow requires volumetric calculation grids. Hence, methods are implemented that actually use the volumetric grid, and incorporate volumetric effects with little additional effort. Spectral volumetric path tracing with Monte Carlo integrated, importance sampled emission was hence the method of choice for this work. The implemented ray tracer is able to emit radiation from point sources, geometric surfaces, as well as from volumetric sources. Spectral dependence of material values is treated using radiation bands with hardly no increase of calculation time, whereas in all other models, the calculation time scales linearly with the amount of bands. Direct, diffuse and mixed surface reflection is modeled. The volumetric refraction index is implemented, so refraction is modeled, even including partial and total reflexion. The focusing of lenses or mirror systems can hence be simulated satisfactory, which cannot be treated sufficiently by any other radiation model. Surface and volumetric absorption are implemented, as well as surface and volumetric scattering effects. The radiation emission can be caused by a temperature field at surfaces and volumes. These fields are imported from software calculating the fluid and the thermal system. Ray tracing results in volumetric and surface heat sources that can be returned to the original code, and their effect further calculations. This coupling was implemented and tested with the commercial computational fluid dynamics code Fluent, using its plug-in interface. As most of Fluent's radiation models are only performed after a fixed number of implicit flow and turbulence iterations, no further disadvantages or limitations occur, that are not as well existing for the existing radiation simulations. A fully implicit treatment of radiation is unlikely to be performed, as stability is already sufficient for most applications. Of course, systems containing only heat sources caused by light and no secondary heat radiation can be treated by the implemented ray tracer with high performance. The implemented ray tracer is validated with analytically solved systems, and compared to quantitative simulation results of other simulation methods. Also, the scattering effects are validated against experimental and simulation results from literature. The observed calculation performance is similar or faster then for standard models with geometries of approximately 150000 volume elements, while the modeling is done more accurately. For larger models, even larger advantages can be expected.

No description available.

Computational time to model radiative heat transfer in a cylindrical Pressurized Oxy-Coal (POC) combustor was reduced by incorporating the multi-dimensional characteristics of the combustion field. The Discrete Transfer Method (DTM) and the Discrete Ordinates Method (DOM) were modified to work with a computational mesh that transitions from 3D cells to axisymmetric and then 1D cells, also known as a dimensionally adaptive mesh. For the DTM, three methods were developed for selecting so-called transdimensional rays, the Single Unweighted Ray (SUR) technique, the Multiple Unweighted Ray (MUR) technique, and the Single Weighted Ray (SWR) technique. For the DOM, averaging methods for handling radiative intensity at dimensional boundaries were developed. Limitations of both solvers with adaptive meshes were identified by comparison with fully 3D results. For the DTM, the primary limit was numerical error associated with view factor calculations. For the DOM, treatment of dimensional boundaries led to step changes that created numerical oscillations, the severity of which was lessened by both increased angular resolution and increased optical thickness. Performance of dimensionally adaptive radiation calculations, uncoupled to any other physical calculation, was evaluated with a series of sensitivity studies including sensitivity to spatial and angular resolution, dimensional boundary placement, and reactor scaling. Runtime was most impacted by boundary layer placement. For the upstream case which had 3D cells over 40% of the reactor length, the speedup versus the fully 3D calculations were 743%, 18%, 220%, and 76% for the SUR, MUR, SWR, and DOM calculations, respectively. The downstream case which had 3D cells over the first 60% of the reactor length, had speedups of 209%, 3%, 109%, and 37%, respectively. For the DTM, accuracy was most sensitive to optical thickness, with the average percent difference in incident heat flux for SUR, MUR, and SWR calculations versus fully 3D calculations being 0.93%, 0.86%, and 1.18%, respectively, for a reactor half the size of the baseline case. The case with four times the reactor size had average percent differences of 0.28%, 0.41%, and 0.39% for the SUR, MUR, and SWR, respectively. Accuracy of the DOM was comparatively insensitive to the different changes studied. Performance of dimensionally adaptive radiation calculations coupled with thermochemistry was also investigated for both pilot and industrial scale systems. For pilot scale systems, flux and temperature differences from either solver were less than 5% and 6%, respectively, with speedups being between 200% - 600%. For industrial systems, temperature differences as high as 15% - 20% and flux differences as high as 50% - 75% were seen. In the case of the DTM, these differences between fully 3D and adaptive results come from a combination of high property gradients and comparatively few rays being drawn and could therefore be improved, at the cost of additional computation time, by using a more sophisticated ray selection method. For the DOM, these issues stem from poor performance of the 1D portion of the solver and could therefore be improved by using a more sophisticated equation to model the radiative transfer in the 1D region.

This work studied the hot wire method in measuring thermal conductivity at room temperature. The purpose is to find the optimized experimental conditions to minimize natural convection in liquid for this method, which will be taken as reference for high temperature thermal conductivity measurement of slag. Combining room temperature experiments and simulation with COMSOL Multiphysics 4.2a, the study on different experimental parameters which may influence the accuracy of the measured thermal conductivity was conducted. The parameters studied were the diameter of crucible, the position of wire in the liquid, including z direction and x-y plane position, diameter of the hot wire, and current used in the measurement. In COMSOL simulations, the maximum natural convection velocity value was used to evaluate the natural convection in the liquid. The experiment results showed after 4~5 seconds of the measuring process, the natural convection already happened. Also when current was fixed, the thinner the hot wire, the larger convection it would cause. This is because thinner wire generates more heat per unit surface area. Using higher current in measuring, more heat generation improved accuracy of result but also had earlier and larger effect on convection. Both simulation and experiments showed that with the height of the liquid fixed, the smaller diameter of the crucible (not small to the level which is comparable with hot wire diameter), the higher the position in z direction (still covered by liquid), the less natural convection effect existed. But the difference was not significant. The radius-direction position change didn’t influence the result much as long as the wire was not too close to the wall.

This study has focused on determining the heat flows in a production blast furnace hearth. This part of the blast furnace is exposed to high temperatures. In order to increase the campaign length of the lining an improved knowledge of heat flows are necessary. Thus, it has been studied both experimentally and numerically by heat transfer modeling. Measurements of outer surface temperatures in the lower part of a production blast furnace were carried out. In the experimental study, relations were established between lining temperatures and outer surface temperatures. These relations were used as boundary conditions in a mathematical model, in which the temperature profiles in the hearth lining are calculated. The predictions show that the corner between the wall and the bottom is the most sensitive part of the hearth. Furthermore, the predictions show that no studied part of the lining had an inner temperature higher than the critical temperature 1150°C, where the iron melt can be in contact with the lining. / QC 20101124

No description available.

Modern gas turbine blades and vanes are operated at temperatures above their material’s melting point. Active external and internal cooling are therefore necessary to reach acceptable lifetimes. One possible internal cooling method is called matrix cooling, where a matrix of intersecting cooling air channels is integrated into a blade or vane. To further increase the efficiency of gas turbines, the amount of cooling air must be reduced. Therefore it is necessary that heat transfer inside a cooling matrix is well understood. In the first part of the thesis, a methodology for estimating heat transfer in the flow of matrix cooling channels was established using Computational Fluid Dynamics. Two four-equation RANS turbulence models based on the k-ε turbulence model showed a good correlation with experimental results, while the k-ω SST model underpredicted the heat transfer significantly. For all turbulence models, the heat transfer showed high sensitivity towards changes in the numerical setup. For the k-ω SST turbulence model, the mesh requirements were deemed too computationally expensive and it was excluded from further investigations. As the second part of the thesis, a parameter study was conducted investigating the influence of several geometric parameters on the heat transfer in a cooling matrix. The matrix was simplified as a channel flow interacting with multiple crossing flows. The highest enhancement in heat transfer was seen with changes in taper ratio, aspect ratio and matrix angle. Compared to smooth pipe flow, an increase in heat transfer of up to 60% was observed. Rounded edges of the cooling channels showed a significant influence on the heat transfer as well. In contrast, no influence of the wall thickness on the heat transfer was observed. While no direct validation is possible, the base case and the parameter sweeps show a good correlation with similar cases found in the literature.