Prediction of laminar – turbulent transition on highly-loaded turbomachinery profiles

The paper presents a review of the current knowledge concerning the modelling of laminar – turbulent transition on turbomachinery blading. The most important physical features of laminar – turbulent transition are reviewed and their consequences for CFD modelling are discussed. The main features and assumptions of existing models are discussed with special reference to intemittency based models. The limitations of existing models are discussed and the reasons why intermittency – based models seem to be a promising perspective are outlined. The main features of intermittency – based model developed at the Institute of Thermal Machinery and extended by in-house correlations on onset location and transition length are also presented and discussed.