Unsteady Passing Wake Effects on Turbine Blade Tip Aerodynamic and Aerothermal Performance With Film Cooling

Author(s):  
Bo Zhang ◽  
Xiaoqing Qiang ◽  
Jinfang Teng ◽  
Shaopeng Lu

Abstract In this paper, upstream unsteady passing wake effects on the rotor blade tip with film cooling have been numerically examined. The geometry and flow conditions of the first stage of GE-E3 high-pressure turbine have been used to obtain the unsteady three-dimensional blade tip flow and heat transfer characteristics. The first stage of GE-E3 high-pressure turbine has 46 guide vanes and 76 rotor blades. In the process of calculation, compromise the computational resources and accuracy to simplify the number of the guide vane and rotor blade to 38:76. Namely, each computational domain comprises of one guide vane and two rotor blades. The computational boundary conditions are consistent with the GE-E3 annular cascade test conditions. In the case of 1% blade span tip clearance, through comparing the steady results, time-averaged and time-resolved unsteady results, the investigation of the unsteady passing wake effects on flat tip aerodynamic and aerothermal performance without film cooling holes (NC) and three cases with film cooling holes are conducted. To be specific, near the leading edge (C123), at the central area (C456) and near the trailing edge (C789). This paper emphasizes the variation of leakage flow and heat transfer coefficient at different unsteady instants. The results show that the time-averaged leakage flow is pretty similar to the steady results, but the increment of the leakage flow can rise to more than 8% at the maximum envelope. Moreover, the heat transfer coefficient discrepancy between steady results and time-averaged results is almost below 4%, but the dramatic growth of the instantaneous heat transfer coefficient along the pressure side is in excess of 20% due to the shift of the pressure spot.

Author(s):  
Andrew J. Saul ◽  
Peter T. Ireland ◽  
John D. Coull ◽  
Tsun Holt Wong ◽  
Haidong Li ◽  
...  

The effect of film cooling on a high pressure turbine blade with an open squealer tip has been examined in a high speed linear cascade. The cascade operates at engine realistic Mach and Reynolds numbers, producing transonic flow conditions over the blade tip. Tests have been performed on two uncooled tip geometries with differing pressure side rim edge radii, and a cooled tip matching one of the uncooled cases. The pressure sensitive paint technique has been used to measure adiabatic film cooling effectiveness on the blade tip at a range of tip gaps and coolant mass flow rates. Complementary tip heat transfer coefficients (HTC) have been measured using transient infrared thermography, and the effects of the coolant film on the tip heat transfer and engine heat flux examined. The uncooled data show that the tip heat transfer coefficient distribution is governed by the nature of flow reattachments and impingements. The squealer tip can be broken down into three regions, each exhibiting a distinct response to a change in the tip gap, depending on the local behaviour of the overtip leakage flow. The edge radius of the pressure side rim causes the overtip leakage flow to change dramatically at low clearance. Complementary CFD shows that the addition of casing motion causes no further change on the pressure side rim. Injected coolant interacts with the overtip leakage flow, which can locally enhance the tip heat transfer coefficient compared to the uncooled tip. The film effectiveness is dependent on both the coolant mass flow rate and tip clearance. At increased coolant mass flow, areas of high film effectiveness on the pressure side rim coincide strongly with a net heat flux reduction and in the subsonic tip region with low heat transfer coefficient.


Author(s):  
Diganta Narzary ◽  
Kevin Liu ◽  
Je-Chin Han ◽  
Shantanu Mhetras ◽  
Kenneth Landis

Film-cooling and heat transfer characteristics of a gas turbine blade tip with a suction side rail was investigated in a stationary 3-blade rectilinear cascade. Mounted at the end of a blow-down facility the cascade operated at inlet and exit Mach numbers of 0.29 and 0.75, respectively. The rail was marginally offset from the suction side edge of the tip and extended from the leading to the trailing edge. A total of 17 film-cooling holes were placed along the near-tip pressure side surface and 3 on the near-tip leading edge surface with the objective of providing coolant to the tip. The tip surface itself did not carry any film-cooling holes. Relatively high blowing ratios of 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, and 4.5 and three tip gaps of 0.87%, 1.6%, and 2.3% of blade span made up the test matrix. Pressure sensitive paint (PSP) and Thermo-Chromic Liquid Crystal (TLC) were the experimental techniques employed to measure film-cooling effectiveness and heat transfer coefficient, respectively. Results indicated that when the tip gap was increased, film-cooling effectiveness on the tip surface decreased and heat transfer to the tip surface increased. On the other hand, when the blowing ratio was increased, film effectiveness increased but the effect on heat transfer coefficient was relatively small. The highest heat transfer coefficient levels were found atop the suction side rail, especially in the downstream two-thirds of its length whereas the lowest levels were found on the tip floor in the widest section of the blade.


2004 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 345-354 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Dittmar ◽  
Achmed Schulz ◽  
Sigmar Wittig

The demand of improved thermal efficiency and high power output of modern gas turbine engines leads to extremely high turbine inlet temperature and pressure ratios. Sophisticated cooling schemes including film cooling are widely used to protect the vanes and blades of the first stages from failure and to achieve high component lifetimes. In film cooling applications, injection from discrete holes is commonly used to generate a coolant film on the blade's surface.In the present experimental study, the film cooling performance in terms of the adiabatic film cooling effectiveness and the heat transfer coefficient of two different injection configurations are investigated. Measurements have been made using a single row of fanshaped holes and a double row of cylindrical holes in staggered arrangement. A scaled test model was designed in order to simulate a realistic distribution of Reynolds number and acceleration parameter along the pressure side surface of an actual turbine guide vane. An infrared thermography measurement system is used to determine highly resolved distribution of the models surface temperature. Anin-situcalibration procedure is applied using single embedded thermocouples inside the measuring plate in order to acquire accurate local temperature data.All holes are inclined 35° with respect to the model's surface and are oriented in a streamwise direction with no compound angle applied. During the measurements, the influence of blowing ratio and mainstream turbulence level on the adiabatic film cooling effectiveness and heat transfer coefficient is investigated for both of the injection configurations.


Author(s):  
Vijay K. Garg

A multi-block, three-dimensional Navier-Stokes code has been used to compute heat transfer coefficient on the blade, hub and shroud for a rotating high-pressure turbine blade with 172 film-cooling holes in eight rows. Film cooling effectiveness is also computed on the adiabatic blade. Wilcox’s k-ω model is used for modeling the turbulence. Of the eight rows of holes, three are staggered on the shower-head with compound-angled holes. With so many holes on the blade it was somewhat of a challenge to get a good quality grid on and around the blade and in the tip clearance region. The final multi-block grid consists of 4784 elementary blocks which were merged into 276 super blocks. The viscous grid has over 2.2 million cells. Each hole exit, in its true oval shape, has 80 cells within it so that coolant velocity, temperature, k and ω distributions can be specified at these hole exits. It is found that for the given parameters, heat transfer coefficient on the cooled, isothermal blade is highest in the leading edge region and in the tip region. Also, the effectiveness over the cooled, adiabatic blade is the lowest in these regions. Results for an uncooled blade are also shown, providing a direct comparison with those for the cooled blade. Also, the heat transfer coefficient is much higher on the shroud as compared to that on the hub for both the cooled and the uncooled cases.


2008 ◽  
Vol 130 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
James D. Heidmann ◽  
Srinath Ekkad

A novel turbine film-cooling hole shape has been conceived and designed at NASA Glenn Research Center. This “antivortex” design is unique in that it requires only easily machinable round holes, unlike shaped film-cooling holes and other advanced concepts. The hole design is intended to counteract the detrimental vorticity associated with standard circular cross-section film-cooling holes. This vorticity typically entrains hot freestream gas and is associated with jet separation from the turbine blade surface. The antivortex film-cooling hole concept has been modeled computationally for a single row of 30 deg angled holes on a flat surface using the 3D Navier–Stokes solver GLENN-HT. A blowing ratio of 1.0 and density ratios of 1.05 and 2.0 are studied. Both film effectiveness and heat transfer coefficient values are computed and compared to standard round hole cases for the same blowing rates. A net heat flux reduction is also determined using both the film effectiveness and heat transfer coefficient values to ascertain the overall effectiveness of the concept. An improvement in film effectiveness of about 0.2 and in net heat flux reduction of about 0.2 is demonstrated for the antivortex concept compared to the standard round hole for both blowing ratios. Detailed flow visualization shows that as expected, the design counteracts the detrimental vorticity of the round hole flow, allowing it to remain attached to the surface.


Author(s):  
Arun K. Saha ◽  
Sumanta Acharya ◽  
Chander Prakash ◽  
Ron Bunker

A numerical study has been conducted to explore the effect of a pressure-side winglet on the flow and heat transfer over a blade tip. Calculations are performed for both a flat tip and a squealer tip. The winglet is in the form of a flat extension, and is shaped in the axial chord direction to have the maximum thickness at the chord location where the pressure difference is the largest between the pressure and suction sides. For the flat tip, the pressure side winglet exhibits a significant reduction in the leakage flow strength and an associated reduction in the aerodynamic loss. The low heat transfer coefficient “sweet-spot” region is larger with the pressure-side winglet, and lower heat transfer coefficients are also observed along the pressure side of the blade. The winglet reduces the average heat transfer coefficient by about 7%. In the presence of a squealer, the role of the winglet decreases significantly, and only a 0.5% reduction in the pressure ratio is achieved with the winglet with virtually no reduction in the average heat transfer coefficient.


Author(s):  
Zhaofang Liu ◽  
Zhao Liu ◽  
Zhenping Feng

This paper presents an investigation on the hot streak migration across rotor blade tip clearance in a high pressure gas turbine with different tip clearance heights. The blade geometry is taken from the first stage of GE-E3 turbine engine. Three tip clearances, 1.0%, 1.5%, and 2.5% of the blade span with a flat tip were investigated, respectively, and the uniform and nonuniform inlet temperature profiles were taken as the inlet boundary conditions. A new method for heat transfer coefficient calculation recommended by Maffulli and He has been adopted. By solving the unsteady compressible Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes equations, the time dependent solutions were obtained. The results indicate that the large tip clearance intensifies the leakage flow, increases the hot streak migration rate, and aggravates the heat transfer environment on the blade tip. However, the reverse secondary flow dominated by the relative motion of casing is insensitive to the change of tip clearance height. Attributed to the high-speed rotation of rotor blade and the low pressure difference between both sides of blade, a reverse leakage flow zone emerges over blade tip near trailing edge. Because it is possible for heat transfer coefficient distributions to be greatly different from heat flux distributions, it becomes of great concern to combine both of them in consideration of hot streak migration. To eliminate the effects of blade profile variation due to twist along the blade span on the aerothermal performance in tip clearance, the tested rotor (straight) blade and the original rotor (twisted) blade of GE-E3 first stage with the same tip profile are compared in this paper.


Author(s):  
Jae Su Kwak ◽  
Je-Chin Han

The detailed distributions of heat transfer coefficient and film cooling effectiveness on a gas turbine blade tip were measured using a hue detection based transient liquid crystal technique. Tests were performed on a five-bladed linear cascade with blow down facility. The blade was a 2-dimensional model of a first stage gas turbine rotor blade with a profile of the GE-E3 aircraft gas turbine engine rotor blade. 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 97.7°. The overall pressure ratio was 1.32 and the inlet and exit Mach number were 0.25 and 0.59, respectively. The turbulence intensity level at the cascade inlet was 9.7%. The blade model was equipped with a single row of film cooling holes at both the tip portion along the camber line and near the tip region of the pressure-side. All measurements were made at the three different tip gap clearances of 1%, 1.5%, and 2.5% of blade span and the three blowing ratios of 0.5, 1.0, and 2.0. Results showed that, in general, heat transfer coefficient and film effectiveness increased with increasing tip gap clearance. As blowing ratio increased, heat transfer coefficient decreased, while film effectiveness increased. Results also showed that adding pressure-side coolant injection would further decrease blade tip heat transfer coefficient but increase film effectiveness.


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