Study of Flow Patterns in Radial and Back Swept Turbine Rotor under Design and Off-Design Conditions

Paper details the numerical investigation of flow patterns in a conventional radial turbine compared with a back swept design for same application. The blade geometry of a designed turbine from a 25kW micro gas turbine was used as a baseline. A back swept blade was subsequently designed for the rotor, which departed from the conventional radial inlet blade angle to incorporate up to 25° inlet blade angle. A comparative numerical analysis between the two geometries is presented. While operating at lower than optimum velocity ratios (U/C), the 25° back swept blade offers significant increases in efficiency. In turbocharger since the turbine typically experiences lower than optimum velocity ratios, this improvement in the efficiency at offdesign condition could significantly improve turbocharger performance. The numerical predictions show offdesign performance gains of the order of 4.61% can be achieved, while maintaining design point efficiency.