Numerical Investigation of Airfoil Louvers on the Air Duct Intake

Designing an air intake system are consists several considerations, and one of them islouvers design. On a gas turbine power plant for example, this louvers will redirects the air flow pathinto the compressor for engine combustion and the system’s internal cooling. Furthermore, the shapeand design of the louvers will affect the performance of a gas turbine. Disturbed airflow across thelouvers will cause pressure drop of the intake air, which leads to reduction of the work output from theturbine. This research investigates the effect of varying the angle of attack of the airfoil louversinstalled in gas turbine weather hood onto air intake pressure drop. Airfoil louvers were based on theshape of symmetrical airfoil, with its maximum thickness of 10mm and were designed in Solid worksbased on the coordinate generated using mathematical equation for symmetrical 4-digit NACA airfoil.CFD analysis was conducted by using the built-in Solid works Flow Simulation to visualize the airflow behavior across the louvers at the angles of attack of 25o, 35 o and 45 o and it was found thepressure of the airflow reduced more with higher angle of attack due to vortex formation.