Impact of Rotor–Stator Interaction on Turbine Blade Film Cooling

1996 ◽  
Vol 118 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-133 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. S. Abhari

The goal of this study is to quantify the impact of rotor–stator interaction on surface heat transfer of film cooled turbine blades. In Section I, a steady-state injection model of the film cooling is incorporated into a two-dimensional, thin shear layer, multiblade row CFD code. This injection model accounts for the penetration and spreading of the coolant jet, as well as the entrainment of the boundary layer fluid by the coolant. The code is validated, in the steady state, by comparing its predictions to data from a blade tested in linear cascade. In Section II, time-resolved film cooled turbine rotor heat transfer measurements are compared with numerical predictions. Data were taken on a fully film cooled blade in a transonic, high pressure ratio, single-stage turbine in a short duration turbine test facility, which simulates full-engine nondimensional conditions. Film cooled heat flux on the pressure surface is predicted to be as much as a factor of two higher in the time average of the unsteady calculations compared to the steady-state case. Time-resolved film cooled heat transfer comparison of data to prediction at two spanwise positions is used to validate the numerical code. The unsteady stator–rotor interaction results in the pulsation of the coolant injection flow out of the film holes with large-scale fluctuations. The combination of pulsating coolant flow and the interaction of the coolant with this unsteady external flow is shown to lower the local pressure side adiabatic film effectiveness by as much as 64 percent when compared to the steady-state case.

Author(s):  
Markus Schmidt ◽  
Christoph Starke

This article presents results for the coupled simulation of a high-pressure turbine stage in consideration of unsteady hot gas flows. A semi-unsteady coupling process was developed to solve the conjugate heat transfer problem for turbine components of gas turbines. Time-resolved CFD simulations are coupled to a finite element solver for the steady state heat conduction inside of the blade material. A simplified turbine stage geometry is investigated in this paper to describe the influence of the unsteady flow field onto the time-averaged heat transfer. Comparisons of the time-resolved results to steady state results indicate the importance of a coupled simulation and the consideration of the time-dependent flow-field. Different film-cooling configurations for the turbine NGV are considered, resulting in different temperature and pressure deficits in the vane wake. Their contribution to non-linear effects causing the time-averaged heat load to differ from a steady result is discussed to further highlight the necessity of unsteady design methods for future turbine developments. A strong increase in the pressure side heat transfer coefficients for unsteady simulations is observed in all results. For higher film-cooling mass flows in the upstream row, the preferential migration of hot fluid towards the pressure side of a turbine blade is amplified as well, which leads to a strong increase in material temperature at the pressure side and also in the blade tip region.


1994 ◽  
Vol 116 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. S. Abhari ◽  
A. H. Epstein

Time-resolved measurements of heat transfer on a fully cooled transonic turbine stage have been taken in a short duration turbine test facility, which simulates full engine nondimensional conditions. The time average of this data is compared to uncooled rotor data and cooled linear cascade measurements made on the same profile. The film cooling reduces the time-averaged heat transfer compared to the uncooled rotor on the blade suction surface by as much as 60 percent, but has relatively little effect on the pressure surface. The suction surface rotor heat transfer is lower than that measured in the cascade. The results are similar over the central 3/4 of the span, implying that the flow here is mainly two dimensional. The film cooling is shown to be much less effective at high blowing ratios than at low ones. Time-resolved measurements reveal that the cooling, when effective, both reduced the dc level of heat transfer and changed the shape of the unsteady waveform. Unsteady blowing is shown to be a principal driver of film cooling fluctuations, and a linear model is shown to do a good job in predicting the unsteady heat transfer. The unsteadiness results in a 12 percent decrease in heat transfer on the suction surface and a 5 percent increase on the pressure surface.


Author(s):  
Reza S. Abhari ◽  
A. H. Epstein

Time-resolved measurements of heat transfer on a fully cooled transonic turbine stage have been taken in a short duration turbine test facility which simulates full engine non-dimensional conditions. The time average of this data is compared to uncooled rotor data and cooled linear cascade measurements made on the same profile. The film cooling reduces the time-averaged heat transfer compared to the uncooled rotor on the blade suction surface by as much as 60%, but has relatively little effect on the pressure surface. The suction surface rotor heat transfer is lower than that measured in the cascade. The results are similar over the central 3/4 of the span implying that the flow here is mainly two-dimensional. The film cooling is shown to be much less effective at high blowing ratios than at low ones. Time-resolved measurements reveal that the cooling, when effective, both reduced the d.c. level of heat transfer and changed the shape of the unsteady waveform. Unsteady blowing is shown to be a principal driver of film cooling fluctuations, and a linear model is shown to do a good job in predicting the unsteady heat transfer. The unsteadiness results in a 12% decrease in heat transfer on the suction surface and a 5% increase on the pressure surface.


Author(s):  
M. D. Barringer ◽  
K. A. Thole ◽  
M. D. Polanka

Within a gas turbine engine, the high pressure turbine vanes are subjected to very harsh conditions from the highly turbulent and hot gases exiting the combustor. The temperature and pressure fields exiting the combustor dictate the heat transfer and aero losses that occur in the turbine passages. To better understand these effects, the goal of this work is to develop an adjustable combustor exit profile simulator for the Turbine Research Facility (TRF) at the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). The TRF is a high temperature, high pressure, short duration blow-down test facility that is capable of matching several aerodynamic and thermal non-dimensional engine parameters including Reynolds number, Mach number, pressure ratio, corrected mass flow, gas-to-metal temperature ratio, and corrected speed. The research objective was to design, install, and verify a non-reacting simulator device that provides representative combustor exit total pressure and temperature profiles to the inlet of the TRF turbine test section. This required the upstream section of the facility to be redesigned into multiple concentric annuli that serve the purpose of injecting high momentum dilution jets and low momentum film cooling jets into a central annular chamber, similar to a turbine engine combustor. The design of the simulator allows for variations in injection levels to generate turbulence and pressure profiles. It also can vary the dilution and film cooling temperatures to create a variety of temperature profiles consistent with real combustors. To date, the design and construction of the simulator device has been completed. All of the hardware has been trial fitted and the flow control shutter systems have been successfully installed and tested. Currently, verification testing is being performed to investigate the impact of the generated temperature, pressure, and turbulence profiles on turbine heat transfer and secondary flow development.


2013 ◽  
Vol 135 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul M. Kodzwa ◽  
John K. Eaton

This paper presents isoenergetic temperature and steady-state film-cooled heat transfer coefficient measurements on the pressure surface of a modern, highly cambered transonic airfoil. A single passage model simulated the idealized two-dimensional flow path between blades in a modern transonic turbine. This set up offered a simpler construction than a linear cascade but produced an equivalent flow condition. Furthermore, this model allowed the use of steady-state, constant surface heat fluxes. We used wide-band thermochromic liquid crystals (TLCs) viewed through a novel miniature periscope system to perform high-accuracy (±0.2 °C) thermography. The peak Mach number along the pressure surface was 1.5, and maximum turbulence intensity was 30%. We used air and carbon dioxide as injectant to simulate the density ratios characteristic of the film cooling problem. We found significant differences between isoenergetic and recovery temperature distributions with a strongly accelerated mainstream and detached coolant jets. Our heat transfer data showed some general similarities with lower-speed data immediately downstream of injection; however, we also observed significant heat transfer attenuation far downstream at high blowing conditions. Our measurements suggested that the momentum ratio was the most appropriate variable to parameterize the effect of injectant density once jet lift-off occurred. We noted several nonintuitive results in our turbulence effect studies. First, we found that increased mainstream turbulence can be overwhelmed by the local augmentation of coolant injection. Second, we observed complex interactions between turbulence level, coolant density, and blowing rate with an accelerating mainstream.


2016 ◽  
Vol 138 (11) ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Collins ◽  
Kam Chana ◽  
Thomas Povey

The high pressure (HP) rotor tip and over-tip casing are often life-limiting features in the turbine stages of current gas turbine engines. This is due to the high thermal load and high temperature cycling at both low and high frequencies. In the last few years, there have been numerous studies of turbine tip heat transfer. Comparatively fewer studies have considered the over-tip casing heat transfer. This is in part, no doubt, due to the more onerous test facility requirements to validate computational simulations. Because the casing potential field is dominated by the passing rotor, to perform representative over-tip measurements a rotating experiment is an essential requirement. This paper details the measurements taken on the Oxford turbine research facility (OTRF), an engine-scale rotating turbine facility which replicates engine-representative conditions of Mach number, Reynolds number, and gas-to-wall temperature ratio. High density arrays of miniature thin-film heat-flux gauges were used with a spatial resolution of 0.8 mm and temporal resolution of ∼120 kHz. The small size of the gauges, the high frequency response, and the improved processing methods allowed very detailed measurements of the heat transfer in this region. Time-resolved measurements of TAW and Nu are presented for the casing region (−30% to +125% CAX) and compared to other results in the literature. The results provide an almost unique data set for calibrating computational fluid dynamics (CFD) tools for heat transfer prediction in this highly unsteady environment dominated by the rotor over-tip flow.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Zheng Min ◽  
Sarwesh Narayan Parbat ◽  
Qing-Ming Wang ◽  
Minking K. Chyu

Abstract Transpiration cooling is able to provide more uniform coolant coverage than film cooling to effectively protect the component surface from contacting the hot gas. Due to numerous coolant ejection outlets within a small area at the target surface, the experimental thermo-fluid investigation on transpiration cooing becomes a significant challenge. Two classic methods to investigate film cooling, the steady-state foil heater method and the transient thermography technique, both fail for transpiration cooling because the foil heater would block numerous coolant outlets, and the semi-infinite solid conduction model no longer holds for porous plates. In this study, a micro-lithography method to fabricate a silver coil pattern on top of the additively manufactured polymer porous media as the surface heater was proposed. The circuit was deliberately designed to cover the solid surface in a combination of series connection and parallel connection to ensure the power in each unit cell area at the target surface was identical. With uniform heat flux generation, the steady-state tests were conducted to obtain distributions of a pair of parameters, adiabatic cooling effectiveness, and heat transfer coefficient (HTC). The results showed that the adiabatic cooling effectiveness could reach 0.65 with a blowing ratio lower than 0.5. Meanwhile, the heat transfer coefficient ratio (hf/h0) of transpiration cooling was close to 1 with a small blowing ratio at 0.125. A higher HTC ratio was observed for smaller pitch-to-diameter cases due to more turbulence intensity generated at the target surface.


Author(s):  
Amy Mensch ◽  
Karen A. Thole

Ever-increasing thermal loads on gas turbine components require improved cooling schemes to extend component life. Engine designers often rely on multiple thermal protection techniques, including internal cooling and external film cooling. A conjugate heat transfer model for the endwall of a seven-blade cascade was developed to examine the impact of both convective cooling and solid conduction through the endwall. Appropriate parameters were scaled to ensure engine-relevant temperatures were reported. External film cooling and internal jet impingement cooling were tested separately and together for their combined effects. Experiments with only film cooling showed high effectiveness around film-cooling holes due to convective cooling within the holes. Internal impingement cooling provided more uniform effectiveness than film cooling, and impingement effectiveness improved markedly with increasing blowing ratio. Combining internal impingement and external film cooling produced overall effectiveness values as high as 0.4. A simplified, one-dimensional heat transfer analysis was used to develop a prediction of the combined overall effectiveness using results from impingement only and film cooling only cases. The analysis resulted in relatively good predictions, which served to reinforce the consistency of the experimental data.


Author(s):  
R. S. Abhari ◽  
G. R. Guenette ◽  
A. H. Epstein ◽  
M. B. Giles

Time-resolved turbine rotor blade heat transfer data are compared with ab initio numerical calculations. The data was taken on a transonic, 4-to-1 pressure ratio, uncooled, single-stage turbine in a short duration turbine test facility. The data consists of the time history of the heat transfer distribution about the rotor chord at midspan. The numerical calculation is a time accurate, 2-D, thin shear layer, multiblade row code known as UNSFLO. UNSFLO uses Ni’s Lax-Wendroff algorithm, conservative boundary conditions, and a time tilting algorithm to facilitate the calculation of the flow in multiple blade rows of arbitrary pitch ratio with relatively little computer time. The version used for this work had a simple algebraic Baldwin-Lomax turbulence model. The code is shown to do a good job of predicting the quantitative time history of the heat flux distribution. The wake/boundary layer and transonic interaction regions for suction and pressure surfaces are identified and the shortcomings of the current algebraic turbulence modelling in the code are discussed. The influence of hardware manufacturing tolerance on rotor heat transfer variation is discussed. A physical reasoning explaining the discrepancies between the unsteady measurement and the calculations for both the suction and pressure surfaces are given, which may be of use in improving future calculations and design procedures.


1996 ◽  
Vol 118 (4) ◽  
pp. 850-856 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. G. Wiedner ◽  
C. Camci

The present study focuses on the high-resolution determination of local heat flux distributions encountered in forced convection heat transfer studies. The specific method results in an uncertainty level less than 4 percent of the heat transfer coefficient on surfaces with arbitrarily defined geometric boundaries. Heat transfer surfaces constructed for use in steady-state techniques typically use rectangular thin foil electric heaters to generate a constant heat flux boundary condition. There are also past studies dealing with geometrically complex heating elements. Past studies have either omitted the nonuniform heat flux regions or applied correctional techniques that are approximate. The current study combines electric field theory and a finite element method to solve directly for a nonuniform surface heat flux distribution due to the specific shape of the heater boundary. Heat generation per unit volume of the surface heater element in the form of local Joule heating is accurately calculated using a finite element technique. The technique is shown to be applicable to many complex convective heat transfer configurations. These configurations often have complex geometric boundaries such as turbine endwall platforms, surfaces disturbed by film cooling holes, blade tip sections, etc. A complete high-resolution steady-state heat transfer technique using liquid crystal thermography is presented for the endwall surface of a 90 deg turning duct. The inlet flow is fully turbulent with an inlet Re number of 360,000. The solution of the surface heat flux distribution is also demonstrated for a heat transfer surface that contains an array of discrete film cooling holes. The current method can easily be extended to any heat transfer surface that has arbitrarily prescribed boundaries.


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