Experimental Study on Local Heat Transfer in a Rotating, Two-Pass Cooling Channel With Dense Array of Turbulence Promoters With Naphthalene Sublimation Method
Detailed heat transfer coefficient distributions in a rotating, two-pass, square channel with densely arranged rib turbulators on the leading and trailing walls are investigated. Rib turbulators have been used in a cooling channel of turbine airfoils. The dense arrangement of the ribs is one of the potential candidates to improve heat transfer performance because of its surface area enlargement effect. The ribs are arranged with a rib height to channel hydraulic diameter ratio (e/Dh) of 0.13, angles of attack to the mainstream of 60 and 90deg, and rib pitch-to-height ratios (P/e) of 3, 6 and 10. Both rib and floor surfaces are coated with naphthalene to measure their local mass transfer rate, which is correlated with heat transfer coefficient through heat/mass transfer analogy. Combination of a laser displacement sensor and a precision auto-traverse system enables detailed measurement of local heat transfer distribution on the floor surface between the ribs. Overall heat transfer coefficient including the effect of the rib is obtained by measuring the decrease in weight of the naphthalene test piece. Reynolds number is set at 50,000 and rotation numbers are up to 0.05. The results show that the effect of rotation on local heat transfer behavior depends on the rib spacing and orientation. Compared the overall heat transfer coefficients with the local ones on the floor surface, they showed different trend in some cases. This suggests that variation of rib heat transfer characteristics due to rotation might determine the overall heat transfer coefficient. Such tendency would be stronger for smaller rib spacing because surface area of the rib has large portion of the total heat transfer area. Further investigation on this effect is expected by measuring heat transfer of rib itself under rotating condition.