This work reports the results of a cooperation between the Energy Systems and Turbomachinery (EST) Research Group at the Department of Engineering - University of Bergamo, SCAI – CINECA and SCS Italy. The main goal is to explore and exploit the potential of the OpenFoam Toolbox to study the flowfield in a high pressure turbine nozzle guide vane or, in other words, to characterize the turbine section of a gas turbine engine.
The present study is the first step toward the introduction of the OpenFoam Toolbox for such applications in order to exploit the joined perspectives of the High Performance Computing facilities available at CINECA and the license-free business model provided by OpenFoam. The object of the investigation presented herein is a solid vane (without film cooling) typical encountered in high pressure turbine stages, whose aerodynamic behavior has been characterized by EST Laboratory testing.
The preliminary outcomes of the analysis are encouraging in terms of both accuracy with respect to experimental data and computational efficiency on HPC platforms.