AN ENTROPY BASED EVALUATION OF EFFICIENCY OF A TRANSONIC COMPRESSOR ROTOR WITH WATER INJECTION

摘要

Defining the thermodynamic efficiency of the wet compression process in a compressor is not trivial, since the flow in this case has multiple phases present which interact with each other. In this paper, an approach is presented that calculates the overall entropy creation and thus the isentropic efficiency of a wet compression process in a transonic compressor rotor. The viscous dissipation function is calculated everywhere in the domain in the post-processing phase of the CFD simulation and integrated to the wall, with special treatment in the near-wall regions where high rates of entropy generation occur. The isentropic efficiency of the wet compression is then determined from the entropy generation rate. Analytical integration of wall functions and numerical integration of the viscous dissipation function allows for reasonable results even with relatively coarse grids and can be applied for single-phase flows. The methodology presented is also useful to quantify the efficiency of thermodynamic processes in devices that introduce streams into the flow path, such as cooled turbines and compressors with flow control.