Analysis on Effect of Blade Surface Roughness on Aerodynamic Performance of High-pressure Turbines

ZHOU Jie; WANG Shiji; HOU Weitao; BI Shuai

doi:10.7643/ issn.1672-9242.2025.11.003

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Equipment Environmental Engineering ›› 2025, Vol. 22 ›› Issue (11) : 19-30. DOI: 10.7643/ issn.1672-9242.2025.11.003

Aviation and Aerospace Equipment

Analysis on Effect of Blade Surface Roughness on Aerodynamic Performance of High-pressure Turbines

ZHOU Jie¹, WANG Shiji¹, HOU Weitao¹, BI Shuai²

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Abstract

The work aims to investigate the degradation characteristics of aerodynamic performance of high-pressure turbines within aeroengines or gas turbines due to increased surface roughness after long-term service. Relevant researches were conducted with an efficient point-source numerical simulation method that incorporated the effects of turbine center frame section, cooling air flow and sealing gas, in conjunction with a multi-region numerical simulation method for single-passage cascade. The effect of blade surface roughness on aerodynamic performance was clarified, and the SST turbulence model was applied to analyze how variations in the magnitude and distribution of surface roughness affected key aerodynamic performance parameters, thus enabling the prediction of performance degradation trends. The variations in expansion ratio, power, energy loss, and efficiency of high-pressure turbines under different surface roughness and distributions were calculated. With the increase of blade surface roughness, the efficiency of high-pressure turbines decreased and the flow losses increased. The blade surface roughness of the first-stage rotor blade had the greatest impact on high-pressure turbine performance parameters. Except for the trailing edge, the dimensionless energy loss increased markedly in other regions of the first-stage rotor blade with the increasing surface roughness. The impact of roughness on flow losses was relatively smaller in the pressure surface before the throat and at the leading edge, but became more pronounced on the suction side and the pressure side after the throat. In the trailing edge region, due to the effect of wake vortex, the dimensionless energy loss slightly decreased with the increasing surface roughness. Both the magnitude and distribution of blade surface roughness have a significant impact on the degradation of high-pressure turbine aerodynamic performance. When the roughness increases from Ra=2.4 μm to Ra=6.4 μm, the flow losses in the high-pressure turbine increase noticeably, resulting in about a 1% efficiency drop. Therefore, it is necessary to implement appropriate surface finishing measures to mitigate turbine performance degradation.

Key words

turbine blade / surface roughness / aerodynamic performance / aeroengine / energy loss / efficiency / numerical simulation

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ZHOU Jie, WANG Shiji, HOU Weitao, BI Shuai. Analysis on Effect of Blade Surface Roughness on Aerodynamic Performance of High-pressure Turbines[J]. Equipment Environmental Engineering. 2025, 22(11): 19-30 https://doi.org/10.7643/ issn.1672-9242.2025.11.003

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