scholarly journals Gas Turbine Studies at Oxford 1969–1987

Author(s):  
T. V. Jones

Gas turbine heat transfer studies commenced at Oxford University in 1969 when transient techniques previously used for measurements in hypersonic flows were applied to the gas turbine environment. Shock tubes were employed and subsequently a new form of transient tunnel, the Isentropic Light Piston Tunnel, was developed specifically for turbine heat transfer testing. During the following years further short duration facilities were developed to study blade and vane external aerodynamics and also the heat transfer in cooling passages was examined using liquid crystal techniques. All these transient facilities are described and the development of the instrumentation peculiar to these is explained. The results of the work on external and internal heat transfer are summarised. In particular, the film cooling studies, the blade and vane external heat transfer work and the wake simulation experiments are outlined. This paper is dedicated to the late Don Schultz.

Author(s):  
Mingfei Li ◽  
Xueying Li ◽  
Jing Ren ◽  
Hongde Jiang

The cooling system is required to ensure gas turbine can work at high temperature, which has exceeded the material limitation. An endwall cooling test rig was built up to conduct the endwall cooling research. A detailed work was done for analyzing characteristics of endwall heat transfer and discussing the multi-parameter influence mechanism of overall cooling effectiveness. The main flow side heat transfer coefficient, adiabatic film cooling effectiveness and overall cooling effectiveness were measured in the experiments. The effects of coolant mass flowrate ratio (MFR) were considered through the measurement. In order to analyze how each of the parameters works on overall cooling effectiveness, a one-dimensional correlation was developed. The results showed that obvious enhancement could be found in cooling effectiveness by increasing coolant MFR, and the film jet can be easily attached to the surface after the acceleration of the main flow in the nozzle channel. Comparing with film cooling effectiveness, overall cooling effectiveness distribution is more uniform, which is due to the influence of internal cooling. The verified one-dimensional analysis method showed that the improvement in film cooling would be most efficient to heighten overall cooling effectiveness. The improvement in film cooling would be more efficient when film cooling effectiveness is in high level than in low level. However, the enhancement of internal heat transfer is more efficient when internal heat transfer coefficient is low.


Author(s):  
J. Kruekels ◽  
S. Naik ◽  
A. Lerch ◽  
A. Sedlov

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.


Author(s):  
Karsten Kusterer ◽  
Gang Lin ◽  
Dieter Bohn ◽  
Takao Sugimoto ◽  
Ryozo Tanaka ◽  
...  

Improvement of the gas turbine thermal efficiency can be achieved by reducing the cooling fluid amount in internal cooling channels with enhanced convective cooling. Nowadays the state of the art internal cooling technology for thermally high-loaded gas turbine blades consists of multiple serpentine-shaped cooling channels with angled ribs. Besides, huge effort is put on the development of more advanced internal cooling configurations with further internal heat transfer enhancements. Swirl chamber flow configurations, in which air is flowing through a pipe with a swirling motion generated by tangential jet inlet, have a potential for application as such advanced technology. This paper presents the validation of numerical results for a standard swirl chamber, which has been investigated experimentally in a reference publication. The numerical results obtained with application of the SST k-ω model show the best agreement with the experiment data in compare with other turbulence models. It has been found at the inlet region that the augmentation of the heat transfer is nearly seven times larger than the fully developed non-swirl flow. Within the further numerical study, another cooling configuration named Double Swirl Chambers (DSC) has been obtained and investigated. The numerical results are compared to the reference case. With the same boundary conditions and Reynolds number, the heat transfer coefficients are higher for the DSC configuration than for the reference configuration. In particular at the inlet region, the DSC configuration has even higher circumferentially averaged heat transfer enhancement in one section by approximately 41%. The globally-averaged heat transfer enhancement in DSC configuration is 34.5% higher than the value in the reference SC configuration. This paper presents the configuration of the DSC as an alternative internal cooling technology and explains its major physical phenomena, which are the reasons for the improvement of internal heat transfer.


Author(s):  
B. Glezer ◽  
H. K. Moon ◽  
T. O’Connell

Development of an adequate air cooling system for the thermally highly loaded leading edge and tip of the blade, that is cost effective and also relatively insensitive to manufacturing tolerances and operating environment continues to be one of the major challenges in advanced gas turbine design. Extensive studies on the convective (including impingement) and film cooling techniques produced remarkable progress in achieving a high cooling effectiveness level for turbine airfoils. However, in the case of turbine blades, application of these techniques has severe limitations. Highly effective impingement cooling needs to be combined with film discharge of the spent air to avoid a negative impact of crossflow on internal heat transfer and also provide additional thermal protection of the surface downstream of the discharge holes. Noticeable aerodynamic penalties, stress concentration and significant increase in manufacturing cost limit application of blade film cooling, particularly for moderately high operating temperatures. Search for a highly effective robust design of internal airfoil cooling which can delay the use of film cooling resulted in the creation of a new technique which is described in this paper. This technique is based on generation of a swirling flow structure in the blade internal leading edge passage. Significant heat transfer augmentation can be achieved when the cooling air is delivered into the leading edge plenum tangentially to the inner concave surface. The best results can be obtained when the swirling flow is allowed to move radially, creating a three-dimensional screw-shaped flow in the plenum. The presented results of the flow and heat transfer studies performed for the practical range of Reynolds numbers for the internal flow show that the leading edge screw-shaped cooling technique provides internal heat transfer rate comparable with impingement coupled with film discharge of the spent air, is more effective than impingement with cross flow and is almost five times higher than heat transfer in the smooth channel.


Author(s):  
Dongliang Quan ◽  
Songling Liu ◽  
Jianghai Li ◽  
Gaowen Liu

Integrated impingement and pin fin cooling devices have comprehensive advantages of hot-side film cooling, internal impingement cooling, large internal heat transfer area and enhanced heat exchange caused by the pin fin arrays, so it is considered a promising cooling concept to meet the requirements of modern advanced aircraft engines. In this paper, experimental study, one dimensional model analysis and numerical simulation were conducted to investigate cooling performance of this kind of cooling device. A typical configuration specimen was made and tested in a large scale low speed closed-looped wind tunnel. The cooling effectiveness was measured by an infrared thermography technique. The target surface was coated carefully with a high quality black paint to keep a uniform high emissivity condition. The measurements were calibrated with thermocouples welded on the surface. Detailed two-dimensional contour maps of the temperature and cooling effectiveness were obtained for different pressure ratios and therefore different coolant flow-rates through the tested specimen. The experimental results showed that very high cooling effectiveness can be achieved by this cooling device with relatively small amount of coolant flow. Based on the theory of transpiration cooling in porous material, a one dimensional heat transfer model was established to analyze the effect of various parameters on the cooling effectiveness. The required resistance and internal heat transfer characteristics were obtained from experiments. It was found from this model that the variation of heat transfer on the gas side, including heat transfer coefficient and film cooling effectiveness, of the specimen created much more effect on its cooling effectiveness than that of the coolant side. The heat transfer intensities inside the specimen played an important role in the performance of cooling. In the last part of this paper, a conjugate numerical simulation was carried out using commercial software FLUENT 6.1. The domain of the numerical simulation included the specimen and the coolant. Detailed temperature contours of the specimen were obtained for various heat transfer boundary conditions. The calculated flow resistance and cooling effectiveness agree well with the experimental data and the predictions with the one-dimensional analysis model. The numerical simulations reveal that the impingement of the coolant jets in the specimen is the main contribution to the high cooling effectiveness.


Author(s):  
S. Naik ◽  
T. P. Sommer ◽  
M. Schnieder

This paper describes the aero-thermal design and validation of an advanced axial flow turbine. This turbine, which has evolved from the existing and proven GT26/GT24 design consists of an optimised annulus flow path using high lift airfoil profiles and improved aerodynamic matching between the turbine stages. A major design feature of the turbine has been to control and reduce the aerodynamic losses, with particular attention being devoted to minimising the secondary, trailing edge and blade tip losses. The advantages of these design changes to the overall turbine efficiency has been verified by extensive controlled experimentation in high-speed cascade test facilities; by the utilisation of 3D multi-row computational fluid dynamics analysis tools, and via engine tests. In addition to the aerodynamic design modifications of the turbine, the thermal designs of the turbine vanes, blades and heat-shields were also optimised. For the first stage film cooled vane and blade airfoils and platforms, both the film cooling layout and operating characteristics were improved. And for all the internally cooled airfoils, the internal heat transfer design features were additionally optimised, which allowed for more homogenous metal temperature distributions on the airfoil and endwall surfaces. The verification and validation of the thermal designs of the turbine components was confirmed via extensive dedicated testing in high-speed cascades for the film cooling performances, and in scaled perspex models for the internal heat transfer coefficients and local flow distributions. The complete turbine was further tested and validated in the GT26 Test Power Plant in Birr, Switzerland via a dedicated turbine thermal paint test run and a subsequent performance and mapping testing phase.


Author(s):  
Kyle Chavez ◽  
Thomas N. Slavens ◽  
David Bogard

Adiabatic and overall effectiveness levels were measured in a closed loop linear test section using an inlet Reynolds number of 120,000 for an airfoil model at its designed inlet angle of −30.1°. Two models were used in the study — one made of a low thermal conductivity foam, and one of a higher thermal conductivity material which allowed for the Biot number of the second model to match that of the engine component. Since the ratio of the external to internal heat transfer coefficients were also matched to the engine component, the second model was thermally scaled to the actual engine component, allowing for the measurement of the overall effectiveness of the airfoil. The effects of the internal and film cooling on the overall effectiveness were examined in detail. The cooling configuration consisted of 9 rows of shaped holes, with 5 rows of conical shaped holes at the leading edge, one laidback fan-shaped gill-row, and three laidback fan-shaped holes positioned farther downstream. Furthermore, the model contained three internal coolant passages including an impingement cavity and a serpentine passage. The internal passages were lined with internal rib turbulators to enhance the internal heat transfer coefficient. This study had two main goals. First, assess the performance of a fully-cooled airfoil with shaped holes through measurements of adiabatic, internal, and overall effectiveness levels. Second, examine the effects of shaped holes and the utilization of a conduction correction on the capability to predict overall effectiveness with a simple 1D model. It was found that although the large spacing of the holes in the showerhead region produced low adiabatic effectiveness levels, the through-hole convection and impingement provided adequate levels of cooling, resulting in relatively uniform overall effectiveness levels. It was also found that although the shaped film-cooling holes have a significant effect on the 3D conduction throughout the model, the overall effectiveness is still well predicted between rows of holes, but only when a significant conduction correction to the adiabatic effectiveness data is applied. This study highlights the necessity of applied conduction corrections to adiabatic effectiveness data collected with IR thermography, highlights the use of shaped holes in the showerhead region, and confirms the utility of 1D predictive models for overall effectiveness, even for models utilizing shaped holes.


Author(s):  
Aki Grönman ◽  
Petri Sallinen ◽  
Juha Honkatukia ◽  
Jari Backman ◽  
Antti Uusitalo ◽  
...  

Abstract Small-scale gas turbines offer a light weight alternative to engine generators. Despite the many benefits of a micro gas turbine, its efficiency cannot match that of its competitors. This discrepancy is mostly due to Reynolds number losses in turbomachinery but also partly due to internal heat transfer problems, which degrade the performance below what is adiabatically expected. In general, a good understanding about the heat transfer inside the machine is of paramount importance, and innovative engineering solutions are required to improve overall performance. Overall, one of the less exploited areas in the public literature is the effect of the generator cooling approach. Small jet engines can be used as a simple and affordable foundation to produce portable aero derivative micro gas turbines for demonstrating the specific challenges they face but also to study different flow configurations. This study presents combined analytical and experimental analysis of a portable aero derivative micro gas turbine with three main objectives. The first objective is to evaluate the contributions of different heat leakage losses on the overall performance. The second objective is to compare the influence of different generator cooling approaches. And the third objective is to evaluate the effect of different technical modifications. As a result, suggestions are given about the most suitable machine layouts and the importance of several design choices.


Author(s):  
Carlo Carcasci ◽  
Stefano Zecchi ◽  
Gianpaolo Oteri

CO2 emissions reduction has become an important topic, especially after Kyoto protocol. There are several ways to reduce the overall amount of CO2 discharged into the atmosphere, for example using alternative fluids such as steam or CO2. It is therefore interesting to analyze the consequences of their usage on overall performances of gas turbine and blade cooling systems. The presence of steam can be associated with combined or STIG cycle, whereas pure carbon dioxide or air-carbon dioxide mixtures are present in innovative cycles, where the exhaust gas is recirculated partially or even totally. In this paper we will analyze a commercial gas turbine, comparing different fluids used as working and cooling fluids. The different nature of the fluids involved determines different external heat transfer coefficients (external blade surface), different internal heat transfer coefficients (cooling cavities) and affects film cooling effectiveness, resulting in a change of the blade temperature distribution. Results show that the presence of steam and CO2 could determine a non negligible effect on blade temperature. This means that cooling systems need a deep investigation. A redesign of the cooling system could be required. In particular, results show that steam is well suited for internal cooling, whereas CO2 is better used in film cooling systems.


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