Numerical Simulation of Film Cooling on Rotating Blade Tips Within a High-Pressure Turbine

Author(s):  
K. Lu ◽  
M. T. Schobeiri ◽  
J. C. Han

This paper numerically investigates the aerodynamics and film cooling effectiveness of high pressure turbine blade tips. Two different rotor blade tip configurations have been studied: the plane tip with tip hole cooling and the squealer tip with tip hole cooling. The geometry of the blades is determined based on the blade profiles within the three-stage multi-purpose turbine research facility at the Turbomachinery Performance and Flow Research Laboratory (TPFL), Texas A&M University. Seven perpendicular holes along the camber line are used for the tip hole cooling. The clearance between the blade tip and casing is 1.0% of the blade span. For each blade tip configuration, the coolant is ejected through the cooling holes under blowing ratios of M = 0.5, 1.0 and 1.5. In this paper, a comparison between the plane tip and the squealer tip has been presented. The detailed flow structures and film cooling effectiveness are discussed.

Author(s):  
Joao Vieira ◽  
John Coull ◽  
Peter Ireland ◽  
Eduardo Romero

Abstract High pressure turbine blade tips are critical for gas turbine performance and are sensitive to small geometric variations. For this reason, it is increasingly important for experiments and simulations to consider real geometry features. One commonly absent detail is the presence of welding beads on the cavity of the blade tip, which are an inherent by-product of the blade manufacturing process. This paper therefore investigates how such welds affect the Nusselt number, film cooling effectiveness and aerodynamic performance. Measurements are performed on a linear cascade of high pressure turbine blades at engine realistic Mach and Reynolds numbers. Two cooled blade tip geometries were tested: a baseline squealer geometry without welding beads, and a case with representative welding beads added to the tip cavity. Combinations of two tip gaps and several coolant mass flow rates were analysed. Pressure sensitive paint was used to measure the adiabatic film cooling effectiveness on the tip, which is supplemented by heat transfer coefficient measurements obtained via infrared thermography. Drawing from all of this data, it is shown that the weld beads have a generally detrimental impact on thermal performance, but with local variations. Aerodynamic loss measured downstream of the cascade is shown to be largely insensitive to the weld beads.


2011 ◽  
Vol 134 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Naik ◽  
C. Georgakis ◽  
T. Hofer ◽  
D. Lengani

This paper investigates the flow, heat transfer, and film cooling effectiveness of advanced high pressure turbine blade tips and endwalls. Two blade tip configurations have been studied, including a full rim squealer and a partial squealer with leading edge and trailing edge cutouts. Both blade tip configurations have pressure side film cooling and cooling air extraction through dust holes, which are positioned along the airfoil camber line on the tip cavity floor. The investigated clearance gap and the blade tip geometry are typical of that commonly found in the high pressure turbine blades of heavy-duty gas turbines. Numerical studies and experimental investigations in a linear cascade have been conducted at a blade exit isentropic Mach number of 0.8 and a Reynolds number of 9×105. The influence of the coolant flow ejected from the tip dust holes and the tip pressure side film holes has also been investigated. Both the numerical and experimental results showed that there is a complex aerothermal interaction within the tip cavity and along the endwall. This was evident for both tip configurations. Although the global heat transfer and film cooling characteristics of both blade tip configurations were similar, there were distinct local differences. The partial squealer exhibited higher local film cooling effectiveness at the trailing edge but also low values at the leading edge. For both tip configurations, the highest heat transfer coefficients were located on the suction side rim within the midchord region. However, on the endwall, the highest heat transfer rates were located close to the pressure side rim and along most of the blade chord. Additionally, the numerical results also showed that the coolant ejected from the blade tip dust holes partially impinges onto the endwall.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Joao Vieira ◽  
John D Coull ◽  
Peter Ireland ◽  
Eduardo Romero

Abstract High pressure turbine blade tips are critical for gas turbine performance and are sensitive to small geometric variations. For this reason, it is increasingly important for experiments and simulations to consider real geometry features. One commonly absent detail is the presence of welding beads on the cavity of the blade tip, which are an inherent by-product of the blade manufacturing process. This paper therefore investigates how such welds affect the Nusselt number, film cooling effectiveness and aerodynamic performance. Measurements are performed on a linear cascade of high pressure turbine blades at engine realistic Mach and Reynolds numbers. Two cooled blade tip geometries were tested: a baseline squealer geometry without welding beads, and a case with representative welding beads added to the tip cavity. Combinations of two tip gaps and several coolant mass flow rates were analysed. Pressure sensitive paint was used to measure the adiabatic film cooling effectiveness on the tip, which is supplemented by heat transfer coefficient measurements obtained via infrared thermography. Drawing from all of this data, it is shown that the weld beads have a generally detrimental impact on thermal performance, but with local variations. Aerodynamic loss measured downstream of the cascade is shown to be largely insensitive to the weld beads.


Author(s):  
S. Naik ◽  
C. Georgakis ◽  
T. Hofer ◽  
D. Lengani

This paper investigates the flow, heat transfer and film cooling effectiveness of advanced high-pressure turbine blade tips and endwall. Two blade tip configurations have been studied, including a full rim squealer and a partial squealer with a leading edge and trailing edge cut-out. Both blade tip configurations have pressure side film cooling, and cooling air extraction through dust holes which are positioned along the airfoil camber line on the tip cavity floor. The investigated clearance gap and the blade tip geometry are typical of that commonly found in the high pressure turbine blades of heavy-duty gas turbines. Numerical studies and experimental investigations in a linear cascade have been conducted at a blade exit isentropic Mach number of 0.8 and a Reynolds number of 9 × 105. The influence of the coolant flow ejected from the tip dust holes and the tip pressure side film holes has also been investigated. Both the numerical and experimental results showed that there is a complex aero-thermal interaction within the tip cavity and along the endwall. This was evident for both tip configurations. Although, the global heat transfer and film cooling characteristics of both blade tip configurations were similar, there were distinct local differences. The partial squealer exhibited higher local film cooling effectiveness at the trailing edge but also low values at the leading edge. For both tip configurations, the highest heat transfer coefficients were located on the suction side rim within the mid-chord region. However on the endwall, the highest heat transfer rates were located close to the pressure side rim and along most of the blade chord. Additionally, the numerical results also showed that the coolant ejected from the blade tip dust holes partially impinges onto the endwall.


Author(s):  
Sanga Lee ◽  
Dong-Ho Rhee ◽  
Kwanjung Yee

In spite of a myriad of researches on the optimal shape of film cooling holes, only a few attempts have been made to optimize the hole arrangement for film cooling so far. Moreover, although the general scale of film cooling hole is so small that manufacturing tolerance has substantial effects on the cooling performance of turbine, the researches on this issue are even scarcer. If it is possible to obtain optimal hole arrangement which not only improve the film cooling performance but also is robust to the manufacturing tolerance, then overall cooling performance of a turbine would become more reliable and useful from the practical point of view. To this end, the present study proposed a robust design optimization procedure which takes the manufacturing uncertainties into account. The procedure was subsequently applied to the film cooling holes on high pressure turbine nozzle pressure side to obtain the robust array shape under the uncertainty of the manufacturing tolerance. First, the array of the holes was parameterized by 5 design variables using the newly suggested shape functions, and 2 representative factors were considered for the manufacturing tolerance of the film cooling hole. Probabilistic process that consists of Kriging surrogate model and Monte Carlo Simulation with descriptive sampling method was coupled with the design optimization process using Genetic Algorithm. Through this, film cooling hole array which shows the high performance, yet robust to the manufacturing tolerance was obtained, and the effects of the manufacturing tolerance on the cooling performance was carefully investigated. As a result, the region where the film cooling effectiveness is noticeable, as well as the maximum width of the variation of the film cooling effectiveness were reduced through optimization, and it is also confirmed that the tolerance of the holes near the leading edge is more influential to the cooling performance because the film cooling effectiveness is more sensitive to the manufacturing tolerance of the leading edge than that of the trailing edge.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Christian Landfester ◽  
Gunther Mueller ◽  
Robert Krewinkel ◽  
Clemens Domnick ◽  
Martin Böhle

Abstract This comparative study is concerned with the advances in nozzle guide vane (NGV) design developments and their influence on endwall film cooling performance by injecting coolant through the purge slot. This experimental study compares the film cooling effectiveness and the aerodynamic effects for different purge slot configurations on both a flat and an axisymmetrically contoured endwall of a NGV. While the flat endwall cascade was equipped with cylindrical vanes, the contoured endwall cascade consisted of modern NGVs which represent state-of-the-art high-pressure turbine design standards. Geometric variations, e.g. the slot width and injection angle, as well as different blowing ratios were realized. The mainstream flow parameters were set to meet real engine conditions with regard to Reynolds and Mach numbers. Pressure Sensitive Paint was used to determine the adiabatic film cooling effectiveness. Five-hole probe measurements were performed to measure the flow field in the vane wake region. For a more profound insight into the origin of the secondary flows, oil dye visualizations were carried out. The results show that the advances in NGV design have a significantly positive influence on the distribution of the coolant. This has to be attributed to lesser disturbance of the coolant propagation by secondary flow for the optimized NGV design, since the design features are intended to suppress the formation of secondary flow. It is therefore advisable to take these effects into account when designing the film cooling system of a modern high-pressure turbine.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jianlong Chang ◽  
Xinlei Duan ◽  
Yang Du ◽  
Baoquan Guo ◽  
Yutian Pan

AbstractBy combining the synthetic jet and film cooling, the incident cooling flow is specially treated to find a better film cooling method. Numerical simulations of the synthetic coolant ejected are carried out for analyzing the cooling performance in detail, under different blowing ratios, hole patterns, Strouhal numbers, and various orders of incidence for the two rows of holes. By comparing the flow structures and the cooling effect corresponding to the synthetic coolant and the steady coolant fields, it is found that within the scope of the investigations, the best cooling effect can be obtained under the incident conditions of an elliptical hole with the aspect ratio of 0.618, the blow molding ratio of 2.5, and the Strouhal number St = 0.22. Due to the strong controllability of the synthetic coolant, the synthetic coolant can be controlled through adjusting the frequency of blowing and suction, so as to change the interaction between vortex structures for improving film cooling effect in turn. As a result, the synthetic coolant ejection is more advisable in certain conditions to achieve better outcomes.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Izhar Ullah ◽  
Sulaiman M. Alsaleem ◽  
Lesley M. Wright ◽  
Chao-Cheng Shiau ◽  
Je-Chin Han

Abstract This work is an experimental study of film cooling effectiveness on a blade tip in a stationary, linear cascade. The cascade is mounted in a blowdown facility with controlled inlet and exit Mach numbers of 0.29 and 0.75, respectively. The free stream turbulence intensity is measured to be 13.5 % upstream of the blade’s leading edge. A flat tip design is studied, having a tip gap of 1.6%. The blade tip is designed to have 15 shaped film cooling holes along the near-tip pressure side (PS) surface. Fifteen vertical film cooling holes are placed on the tip near the pressure side. The cooling holes are divided into a 2-zone plenum to locally maintain the desired blowing ratios based on the external pressure field. Two coolant injection scenarios are considered by injecting coolant through the tip holes only and both tip and PS surface holes together. The blowing ratio (M) and density ratio (DR) effects are studied by testing at blowing ratios of 0.5, 1.0, and 1.5 and three density ratios of 1.0, 1.5, and 2.0. Three different foreign gases are used to create density ratio effect. Over-tip flow leakage is also studied by measuring the static pressure distributions on the blade tip using the pressure sensitive paint (PSP) measurement technique. In addition, detailed film cooling effectiveness is acquired to quantify the parametric effect of blowing ratio and density ratio on a plane tip design. Increasing the blowing ratio and density ratio resulted in increased film cooling effectiveness at all injection scenarios. Injecting coolant on the PS and the tip surface also resulted in reduced leakage over the tip. The conclusions from this study will provide the gas turbine designer with additional insight on controlling different parameters and strategically placing the holes during the design process.


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