The trailing edge sections of gas turbine vanes and blades are generally subjected to extremely high heat loads due to the combined effects of high external accelerating Mach numbers and gas temperatures. In order to maintain the metal temperatures of these trailing edges to a level, which fulfills the mechanical integrity of the parts, highly efficient cooling of the trailing edges is required without increasing the coolant consumption, as the latter has a detrimental effect on the overall gas turbine performance.
In this paper the characteristics of the heat transfer and pressure drop of two novel integrated pin bank configurations were investigated. These include a pin bank with conical pins and a pin bank consisting of cylindrical pins and intersecting broken turbulators. As baseline case, a pin bank with cylindrical pins was studied as well. All investigations were done in a converging channel in order to be consistent with the real part.
The heat transfer and pressure drop of all the pin banks were investigated initially with the use of numerical predictions and subsequently in a scaled experimental wind tunnel. The experimental study was conducted for a range of operational Reynolds numbers. The TLC (thermochromic liquid crystal) method was used to measure the detailed heat transfer coefficients in scaled Perspex models representing the various pin bank configurations. Pressure taps were located at several positions within the test sections. Both local and average heat transfer coefficients and pressure loss coefficients were determined.
The measured and predicted results showed that the local internal heat transfer coefficient increases in the flow direction. This was due to the flow acceleration in the converging channel. Furthermore, both the broken ribs and the conical pin banks resulted in higher heat transfer coefficients compared with the baseline cylindrical pins. The conical pins produced the highest average internal heat transfer coefficients in contrast to the pins with the broken ribs, though this was also associated with a higher pressure drop.