Development of a Numerical Procedure for Integrated Multidisciplinary Thermal-Fluid-Structural Analysis of an Aeroengine Turbine

The aim of the work is to define a methodology and to develop specific tools that allow engineers to investigate and fully characterize the thermal performance of an aero-engine turbine module. The thermal behaviours of a complex system are the result of strong interactions between the fluid-dynamics aspects, the heat balance within each component and the geometric variations mainly due to the thermal and mechanical loads. All these phenomena are strictly connected and cannot be studied separately without introducing approximations and /or errors in the final results. For long time the industrial approach in turbine design has been based on separate analyses of the phenomena with manual iterations between them to allowed acceptable solutions to be reached. The new requirements in reducing the product time-to-market together with the need of higher accuracy in the design, have driven the development of new approaches based on the multi-disciplinary analysis integration. This paper will summarise the AVIO approach to the turbine design procedure upgrade, mainly focused on the thermal analysis and clearances control. A detail of the methodology used will be presented together with a description of the tools developed. A comparison between numerical predictions and experimental data (full engine test) will be reported.