A computationally efficient and accurate numerical representation of thermodynamic properties of steam and water for computations of non-equilibrium condensing steam flow in steam turbines

Institute of Thermomechanics AS CR, v.i.i. Dolejškova 5, Prague 8, Czech Republic
hruby@it.cas.cz

Abstract

Mathematical modeling of the non-equilibrium condensing transonic steam flow in the complex 3D geometry of a steam turbine is a demanding problem both concerning the physical concepts and the required computational power. Available accurate formulations of steam properties IAPWS-95 and IAPWS-IF97 require much computation time. For this reason, the modelers often accept the unrealistic ideal-gas behavior. Here we present a computation scheme based on a piecewise, thermodynamically consistent representation of the IAPWS-95 formulation. Density and internal energy are chosen as independent variables to avoid variable transformations and iterations. On the contrary to the previous Tabular Taylor Series Expansion Method, the pressure and temperature are continuous functions of the independent variables, which is a desirable property for the solution of the differential equations of the mass, energy, and momentum conservation for both phases.