Three-Dimensional Modeling for Wet Compression in a Single Stage Compressor Including Liquid Particle Erosion Analysis

Gas turbine inlet fog/overspray cooling is considered as a simple and effective method to increase power output. To help understand the water mist transport in the compressor flow passage, this study conducts a 3D computational simulation of wet compression in a single rotor-stator compressor stage using the commercial code FLUENT. A sliding mesh scheme is used to simulate the stator-rotor interaction in a rotating frame. Eulerian–Lagrangian method is used to calculate the continuous phase and track the discrete (droplet) phase. Models to simulate droplet breakup and coalescence are incorporated to take into consideration the effect of local acceleration and deceleration on water droplet dynamics. Analysis on the droplet history (trajectory and size) with stochastic tracking is employed to interpret the mechanism of droplet dynamics under the influence of local turbulence, acceleration, diffusion, and body forces. A liquid-droplet erosion model is included. The sensitivity of the turbulence models on the results is conducted by employing six different turbulence models and four different time constants. The result shows that the local thermal equilibrium is not always achieved due to short residence time and high value of latent heat of water. Local pressure gradients in both the rotor and stator flow passages drive up the droplet slip velocity during compression. The erosion model predicts that the most eroded area occurs in the leading edge and one spot of the trailing edge of the rotor suction side.