Abstract

CFD modeling of water injection for turbine blade cleaning has been carried out to predict the water
coverage on a stationary blade row, which will enable a better understanding on the interactions
between hot-air flow and cold-water droplets. A generic configuration was used in a priori in-house
experiment, which provides test data for CFD validation. The two-phase flow CFD model adopts the
Eulerian-Lagrangian approach, in which the air-flow was treated as the continuous phase and water
droplets as the dispersed phase. CFD predictions are found in fairly good agreement with test results,
particularly the water coverage on the downstream blade row. Moreover, CFD modeling provides
further details, including the trajectory of water droplets, which are difficult to be obtained by
experiments, and yet extremely useful for understanding the flow physic