Simulation of a Multi-Stage Cooling Scheme for Gas Turbine Engines: Part I

Author(s):  
M. Ghorab ◽  
I. Hassan ◽  
M. Beauchamp

This paper presents heat transfer characteristics for a Multi-Stage Cooling Scheme (MSCS) design applicable to high temperature gas turbine engines in aerospace and electric power generation. The film cooling and impingement techniques are considered concurrently throughout this study. The proposed design involves passing cooling air from the inside of the turbine blade to the outside through three designed stages. The coolant air is passed through a circular hole into an internal gap creating an impingement of air inside the blade. It then exits through a sequence of two differently shaped holes onto the blade’s external surface. The film cooling effectiveness is enhanced by increasing the internal gap height and offset distance. This effect is significantly diminished however by changing the inclination angle from 90° to 30° at large gap height. The coolant momentum became more uniform by creating the internal gap consequently the coolant air is spread closer to the external blade surface. This reduces jet liftoff as the air exits its hole and also provides internal cooling for the blade. The hole exit positioned on the outer surface of the blade is designed to give a positive and a wide downstream lateral spreading. The MSCS demonstrates greater film cooling effectiveness performance than traditional schemes.

Author(s):  
M. Ghorab ◽  
S. I. Kim ◽  
I. Hassan

Cooling techniques play a key role in improving efficiency and power output of modern gas turbines. The conjugate technique of film and impingement cooling schemes is considered in this study. The Multi-Stage Cooling Scheme (MSCS) involves coolant passing from inside to outside turbine blade through two stages. The first stage; the coolant passes through first hole to internal gap where the impinging jet cools the external layer of the blade. Finally, the coolant passes through the internal gap to the second hole which has specific designed geometry for external film cooling. The effect of design parameters, such as, offset distance between two-stage holes, gap height, and inclination angle of the first hole, on upstream conjugate heat transfer rate and downstream film cooling effectiveness performance are investigated computationally. An Inconel 617 alloy with variable properties is selected for the solid material. The conjugate heat transfer and film cooling characteristics of MSCS are analyzed across blowing ratios of Br = 1 and 2 for density ratio, 2. This study presents upstream wall temperature distributions due to conjugate heat transfer for different gap design parameters. The maximum film cooling effectiveness with upstream conjugate heat transfer is less than adiabatic film cooling effectiveness by 24–34%. However, the full coverage of cooling effectiveness in spanwise direction can be obtained using internal cooling with conjugate heat transfer, whereas adiabatic film cooling effectiveness has narrow distribution.


Author(s):  
Curtis K. Stimpson ◽  
Jacob C. Snyder ◽  
Karen A. Thole ◽  
Dominic Mongillo

As additive manufacturing (AM) technologies utilizing metal powders continue to mature, the usage of AM parts in gas turbine engines will increase. Current metal AM technologies produce parts with substantial surface roughness that can only be removed from external surfaces and internal surfaces that are accessible for smoothing. Difficulties arise in making smooth the surfaces of small internal channels, which means the augmentation of pressure loss and heat transfer due to roughness must be accounted for in the design. As gas turbine manufacturers have only recently adopted metal AM technologies, much remains to be examined before the full impacts of applying AM to turbine parts are understood. Although discrete film cooling holes have been extensively studied for decades, this objective of this study was to understand how the roughness of film cooling holes made using AM can affect the overall cooling effectiveness. Coupons made from a high temperature nickel alloy with engine-scale film holes were tested in a rig designed to simulate engine relevant conditions. Two different hole sizes and two different build directions were examined at various blowing ratios. Results showed that the effectiveness is dependent on the build direction and the relative size of the hole. It was also discovered that commercially available AM processes could not reliably produce small holes with predictable behavior.


2017 ◽  
Vol 140 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Curtis K. Stimpson ◽  
Jacob C. Snyder ◽  
Karen A. Thole ◽  
Dominic Mongillo

As additive manufacturing (AM) technologies utilizing metal powders continue to mature, the usage of AM parts in gas turbine engines will increase. Current metal AM technologies produce parts with substantial surface roughness that can only be removed from external surfaces and internal surfaces that are accessible for smoothing. Difficulties arise in making smooth the surfaces of small internal channels, which means the augmentation of pressure loss and heat transfer due to roughness must be accounted for in the design. As gas turbine manufacturers have only recently adopted metal AM technologies, much remains to be examined before the full impacts of applying AM to turbine parts are understood. Although discrete film cooling holes have been extensively studied for decades, this objective of this study was to understand how the roughness of film cooling holes made using AM can affect the overall cooling effectiveness. Coupons made from a high temperature nickel alloy with engine-scale film holes were tested in a rig designed to simulate engine relevant conditions. Two different hole sizes and two different build directions were examined at various blowing ratios. Results showed that the effectiveness is dependent on the build direction and the relative size of the hole. It was also discovered that commercially available AM processes could not reliably produce small holes with predictable behavior.


Author(s):  
Bharath Viswanath Ravi ◽  
Samruddhi Deshpande ◽  
Sridharan Ramesh ◽  
Prethive Dhilip Dhilipkumar ◽  
Srinath Ekkad

In view of the growing energy demand, there is an increasing need to augment the thermal efficiency of gas turbine engines. The thermal efficiency and power output of gas turbine engines increase with increasing overall pressure ratio which in turn leads to an increase in turbine inlet temperature. The maximum permissible turbine inlet temperature is limited by the material strength of the components of the gas turbine engines. In this regard, it is important to ensure that the endwalls of the first stage nozzle guide vane, which is one of the critical regions, are adequately cooled. The cooling of the endwall is of particular interest because the leading edge region along the endwall of the stator vane experiences high heat transfer rates resulting from formation of horseshoe vortices. In this paper, the performance of upstream purge slot has been compared against discrete film cooling holes. Three different cooling configurations — slot, cylindrical holes and tripod holes have been investigated by comparing the adiabatic film cooling effectiveness. Furthermore, the effect of coolant to mainstream mass flow ratio on the effectiveness of the different cooling schemes has also been studied. The steady-state experiments were conducted in a low speed, linear cascade wind tunnel. Spatially resolved temperature data was captured using infrared thermography technique to compute adiabatic film cooling effectiveness. Amongst the configurations studied, slot ejection offered the best cooling performance at all mass flow ratios. The performance of tripod ejection was comparable to slot ejection at mass flow ratios between 0.5 and 1.5, with the difference in laterally averaged effectiveness being ∼5%. However, at the highest mass flow ratio (MFR=2.5), the difference increased to ∼20%. Low effectiveness values were observed downstream of cylindrical ejection which could be attributed to jet lift-off.


2003 ◽  
Vol 125 (4) ◽  
pp. 648-657 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jae Su Kwak ◽  
Je-Chin Han

Experimental investigations were performed to measure the detailed heat transfer coefficients and film cooling effectiveness on the squealer tip of a gas turbine blade in a five-bladed linear cascade. The blade was a two-dimensional model of a first stage gas turbine rotor blade with a profile of the GE-E3 aircraft gas turbine engine rotor blade. The test blade had a squealer (recessed) tip with a 4.22% recess. The blade model was equipped with a single row of film cooling holes on the pressure side near the tip region and the tip surface along the camber line. Hue detection based transient liquid crystals technique was used to measure heat transfer coefficients and film cooling effectiveness. All measurements were done for the three tip gap clearances of 1.0%, 1.5%, and 2.5% of blade span at the two blowing ratios of 1.0 and 2.0. The Reynolds number based on cascade exit velocity and axial chord length was 1.1×106 and the total turning angle of the blade was 97.9 deg. The overall pressure ratio was 1.2 and the inlet and exit Mach numbers were 0.25 and 0.59, respectively. The turbulence intensity level at the cascade inlet was 9.7%. Results showed that the overall heat transfer coefficients increased with increasing tip gap clearance, but decreased with increasing blowing ratio. However, the overall film cooling effectiveness increased with increasing blowing ratio. Results also showed that the overall film cooling effectiveness increased but heat transfer coefficients decreased for the squealer tip when compared to the plane tip at the same tip gap clearance and blowing ratio conditions.


Author(s):  
G. J. Sturgess

The paper deals with a small but important part of the overall gas turbine engine combustion system and continues earlier published work on turbulence effects in film cooling to cover the case of film turbulence. Film cooling of the gas turbine combustor liner imposes certain geometric limitations on the coolant injection device. The impact of practical film injection geometry on the cooling is one of increased rates of film decay when compared to the performance from idealized injection geometries at similar injection conditions. It is important to combustor durability and life estimation to be able to predict accurately the performance obtainable from a given practical slot. The coolant film is modeled as three distinct regions, and the effects of injection slot geometry on the development of each region are described in terms of film turbulence intensity and initial circumferential non-uniformity of the injected coolant. The concept of the well-designed slot is introduced and film effectiveness is shown to be dependent on it. Only slots which can be described as well-designed are of interest in practical equipment design. A prediction procedure is provided for well-designed slots which describes growth of the film downstream of the first of the three film regions. Comparisons of predictions with measured data are made for several very different well-designed slots over a relatively wide range of injection conditions, and good agreement is shown.


Author(s):  
M. Gritsch ◽  
A. Schulz ◽  
S. Wittig

This paper presents detailed measurements of the film-cooling effectiveness for three single, scaled-up film-cooling hole geometries. The hole geometries investigated include a cylindrical hole and two holes with a diffuser shaped exit portion (i.e. a fanshaped and a laidback fanshaped hole). The flow conditions considered are the crossflow Mach number at the hole entrance side (up to 0.6), the crossflow Mach number at the hole exit side (up to 1.2), and the blowing ratio (up to 2). The coolant-to-mainflow temperature ratio is kept constant at 0.54. The measurements are performed by means of an infrared camera system which provides a two-dimensional distribution of the film-cooling effectiveness in the nearfield of the cooling hole down to x/D = 10. As compared to the cylindrical hole, both expanded holes show significantly improved thermal protection of the surface downstream of the ejection location, particularly at high blowing ratios. The laidback fanshaped hole provides a better lateral spreading of the ejected coolant than the fanshaped hole which leads to higher laterally averaged film-cooling effectiveness. Coolant passage crossflow Mach number and orientation strongly affect the flowfield of the jet being ejected from the hole and, therefore, have an important impact on film-cooling performance.


Author(s):  
Gi Mun Kim ◽  
Soo In Lee ◽  
Jin Young Jeong ◽  
Jae Su Kwak ◽  
Seokbeom Kim ◽  
...  

Abstract In the vicinity of gas turbine blades, a complex flow field is formed due to the flow separation, reattachment, and secondary flows, and this results in a locally non-uniform and high heat transfer on the surfaces. The present study experimentally investigates the effects of leakage flow through the slot between the gas turbine vane and blade rows on the film cooling effectiveness of the forward region of the shroud ring segment. The experiment is carried out in a linear cascade with five blades. Instead of the vane, a row of rods at the location of the vane trailing edge is installed to consider the wake effect. The leakage flow is introduced through the slot between the vane and blade rows, and additional coolant air is injected from the cooling holes installed at the vane's outer zone. The effects of the slot geometry, cooling hole configuration, and blowing ratio on the film cooling effectiveness are experimentally investigated using the pressure sensitive paint (PSP) technique. CO2 gas and a mixture of SF6 and N2 (25%+75%) are used to simulate the leakage flow to the mainstream density ratios of 1.5 and 2.0, respectively. The results indicate that the area averaged film cooling effectiveness is affected more by the slot width than by the cooling hole configuration at the same injection conditions, and the lower density ratio cases show higher film cooling effectiveness than the higher density ratio case at the same cooling configuration.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document