Experimental Study of Flow in an Industrial Gas Turbine Intake System Under Different Operating Conditions

Abstract The intake system of industrial gas turbines significantly impacts compressor performance due to loss and flow distortion. The flow characteristics of the intake system of an industrial gas turbine have been investigated experimentally and numerically in this paper. A two-dimensional (2D) particle image velocimetry (PIV) system, along with pressure probes, is used to obtain the velocity and total pressure at the intake system outlet. The results show that PIV-measured data are in good agreement with the data obtained from the five-hole pressure probe, indicating the reliability of the experimental results. Experiments are conducted under different flow conditions, showing that the mass flow rate has minimal influence on the cross-flow velocity pattern and flow angle at the intake system outlet. A pair of counter-rotating vortices is present in the intake system. Both the vortices and the struts serve as the two main sources of the swirl flow distortion. Higher mass flow rates are associated with increased total pressure loss, mainly caused by the struts, the counter-rotating vortices, and their interplay. Furthermore, numerical simulation accurately predicts the flow pattern at the outlet of the intake system, with the generalized k–ω model (GEKW) turbulence model demonstrating superior performance compared to other turbulence models.