Numerical insight into flow and thermal patterns within an inlet profile generator comparing to experimental results

Historically the design of gas turbine engines have not considered the interaction between the combustor and turbine stages. High pressure turbine varie stages have been designed assuming inlet conditions consistent with a standard turbulent boundary layer profile. However, combustor exit flow entering the vane is known to be highly non-uniform in both the primary and secondary flow regimes. In order to develop higher performance, more efficient, longer life stages, turbine design must take into account combustor exit non-uniformities. The Turbine Research Facility (TRF) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base has installed a non-reactive full scale annular combustor simulator or more accurately a turbine inlet profile generator to study combustor-vane interaction. Several benchmark tests have been performed on the profile generator consisting of a Taguchi type matrix wherein nine independent variables were adjusted. Supplementing the experimental research at the TRF, a steady state, unstructured, fully three-dimensional CFD analysis was performed. This paper will make comparisons between the CFD and experimental profiles generated by the simulator. Furthermore, the computational study will help to give an understanding of the aerodynamic and aerothermal environment within the generator that experimental instrumentation alone cannot.