Numerical Simulation of Two Pass Gas Turbine Blade Internal Cooling Channels With 90 Degree Varying Height Ribs

Author(s):  
Sourabh Kumar ◽  
R. S. Amano

Improvement in thermal efficiency of gas turbine can be obtained by operating it at high inlet temperatures. In addition to improving the performance, the cons of high inlet temperature is high thermal stresses on the turbine blades. To improve life and performance of the blade, improved cooling technologies are desired. The main objective of this paper is to perform computational analysis of the ribs with varying height and compare this with 90 degree ribbed channel and smooth channels. The numerical analysis is carried out using ANSYS-Fluent, a flow modeling simulation software. The flow is assumed to be steady state and flow turbulence is modeled using the k-ε with Standard Wall Functions. Local heat transfer and friction loss in a square duct roughened with 90 degree ribs with varying height is investigated for different Reynolds number. The pitch of the rib is considered to be 10 times the height of rib which is 0.0635 m. The square cross section of the channel is .0508x .0508 m2. The pitch of rib to rib height ratio varies from 10 to 20 at the center of the channel. There is a rib considered at the turn section as well. The numerical simulation produced higher heat transfer for the varying height ribs as compared to 90 degree ribbed channel and smooth channel.

Author(s):  
Sourabh Kumar ◽  
R. S. Amano

Improvements in the thermal efficiency of a gas turbine can be obtained by operating it at high inlet temperatures. This high inlet temperature develops high thermal stresses on the turbine blades in addition to improving the performance. Cooling methodologies are implemented inside the blades to withstand those high temperatures. Four different combinations of broken 60° V ribs in cooling channel are considered. The research work investigates and compares numerically and experimentally, internal cooling of channels with broken V ribs. Local heat transfer in a square duct roughened with 60° V broken ribs is investigated for three different Reynolds numbers. Aspect ratio of the channel is taken to be 1:1. The pitch of the rib is considered to be 10 times the width of the rib, which is 0.0635 m. The square cross section of the channel is 0.508 × 0.508 m2 with 0.6096 m length. This study provides information about the best configuration of a broken V rib in a cooling channel.


Author(s):  
Shinjan Ghosh ◽  
Jayanta S. Kapat

Abstract Gas Turbine blade cooling is an important topic of research, as a high turbine inlet temperature (TIT) essentially means an increase in efficiency of gas turbine cycles. Internal cooling channels in gas turbine blades are key to the cooling and prevention of thermal failure of the material. Serpentine channels are a common feature in internal blade cooling. Optimization methods are often employed in the design of blade internal cooling channels to improve heat-transfer and reduce pressure drop. Topology optimization uses a variable porosity approach to manipulate flow geometries by adding or removing material. Such a method has been employed in the current work to modify the geometric configuration of a serpentine channel to improve total heat transferred and reduce the pressure drop. An in-house OpenFOAM solver has been used to create non-traditional geometries from two generic designs. Geometry-1 is a 2-D serpentine passage with an inlet and 4 bleeding holes as outlets for ejection into the trailing edge. Geometry-2 is a 3-D serpentine passage with an aspect ratio of 3:1 and consists of two 180-degree bends. The inlet velocity for both the geometries was used as 20 m/s. The governing equations employ a “Brinkman porosity parameter” to account for the porous cells in the flow domain. Results have shown a change in shape of the channel walls to enhance heat-transfer in the passage. Additive manufacturing can be employed to make such unconventional shapes.


Author(s):  
Ajay Sarja ◽  
Srivatsan Madhavan ◽  
Prashant Singh ◽  
Srinath V. Ekkad

Abstract Gas turbine blades are equipped with serpentine internal cooling channels with 180-degree bends, through which relatively colder air is routed to cool the internal walls. It has been established that under the influence of rotation, pressure and suction side internal wall heat transfer characteristics are very different, which leads to non-uniform metal temperatures, and hence higher levels of thermal stresses. Present study addresses this non-uniformity in heat transfer using parallel rotation to negate Coriolis effect. Further, the blade curvature does not allow rectangular or trapezoidal passages, which are typically studied. In this paper, we have numerically investigated a realistic design for the four-passage channel, where the cooling design can actually be incorporated in a blade. Four-passage configuration also features 90-degree square shaped rib turbulators, and the corresponding baseline case is smooth channel. Numerical simulations have been carried out at Reynolds numbers of 5000, 10000 and 25000 and Rotation numbers were varied between 0 and 0.25. For smooth case, heat transfer enhancement was found to be higher on suction (leading) side compared to pressure (trailing) side under both stationary and rotating conditions. The enhancement levels between stationary and rotation conditions varied marginally in these designs, indicating that buoyancy effects were insignificant. For ribbed case, the effect of 90-degree rib turbulators on local heat transfer was more pronounced on the suction side when compared to smooth case. Under rotating conditions, it was found that the cooling levels were similar to the stationary condition for both pressure and suction side internal walls.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ky-Quang Pham ◽  
Quang-Hai Nguyen ◽  
Tai-Duy Vu ◽  
Cong-Truong Dinh

Abstract Gas turbine engine has been widely applied to many heavy industries, such as marine propulsion and aerospace fields. Increasing turbine inlet temperature is one of the major ways to improve the thermal efficiency of gas turbines. Internal cooling for gas turbine cooling system is one of the most commonly used approaches to reduce the temperature of blades by casting various kinds of ribs in serpentine passages to enhance the heat transfer between the coolant and hot surface of gas turbine blades. This paper presents an investigation of boot-shaped rib design to increase the heat transfer performances in the internal cooling turbine blades for gas turbine engines. By varying the design parameter configuration, the airflow is taken with higher momentum, and the minor vortex being at the front rib is relatively removed. The object of this investigation is increasing the reattachment airflow to wall and reducing the vortex occurring near the rib for improving the performances of heat transfer using three-dimensional Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes with the SST model. A parametric study of the boot-shaped rib design was performed using various geometric parameters related to the heel-angle, toe-angle, slope-height and rib-width to find their effect on the Nusselt number, temperature on the ribbed wall, friction factor ratio of the channel and thermal performance factor. The numerical results showed that the heat transfer performances are significantly increased with the heel-angle, toe-angle, slope-height, while that remained relatively constant with the rib-width.


Author(s):  
Oguz Uzol ◽  
Cengiz Camci

A new concept for enhanced turbulent transport of heat in internal coolant passages of gas turbine blades is introduced. The new heat transfer augmentation component called “oscillator fin” is based on an unsteady flow system using the interaction of multiple unsteady jets and wakes generated downstream of a fluidic oscillator. Incompressible, unsteady and two dimensional solutions of Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes equations are obtained both for an oscillator fin and for an equivalent cylindrical pin fin and the results are compared. Preliminary results show that a significant increase in the turbulent kinetic energy level occur in the wake region of the oscillator fin with respect to the cylinder with similar level of aerodynamic penalty. The new concept does not require additional components or power to sustain its oscillations and its manufacturing is as easy as a conventional pin fin. The present study makes use of an unsteady numerical simulation of mass, momentum, turbulent kinetic energy and dissipation rate conservation equations for flow visualization downstream of the new oscillator fin and an equivalent cylinder. Relative enhancements of turbulent kinetic energy and comparisons of the total pressure field from transient simulations qualitatively suggest that the oscillator fin has excellent potential in enhancing local heat transfer in internal cooling passages without significant aerodynamic penalty.


Author(s):  
Arash Saidi ◽  
Bengt Sundén

Internal cooling channels are commonly used to reduce the thermal loads on the gas turbine blades to improve overall efficiency. In this study a numerical investigation has been carried out to provide a validated and consistent method to deal with the prediction of the fluid flow and the heat transfer of such channels with square cross sections. The rotation modified Navier-Stokes and energy equations together with a low-Re number version of the k-ε turbulence model are solved with appropriate boundary conditions. The solution procedure is based on a numerical method using a collocated grid, and the pressure-velocity coupling is handled by the SIMPLEC algorithm. The computations are performed with the assumption of fully developed periodic conditions. The calculations are carried out for smooth ducts with and without rotation and effects of rotation on the heat transfer are described. Similar numerical calculations have carried out for channels with rib-roughened walls. The obtained results are compared with available experimental data and empirical correlations for the heat transfer rate and the friction factor. Some details of the flow and heat transfer fields are also presented.


Author(s):  
Sarwesh Parbat ◽  
Li Yang ◽  
Minking Chyu ◽  
Sin Chien Siw ◽  
Ching-Pang Lee

Abstract The strive to achieve increasingly higher efficiencies in gas turbine power generation has led to a continued rise in the turbine inlet temperature. As a result, novel cooling approaches for gas turbine blades are necessary to maintain them within the material’s thermal mechanical performance envelope. Various internal and external cooling technologies are used in different parts of the blade airfoil to provide the desired levels of cooling. Among the different regions of the blade profile, the trailing edge (TE) presents additional cooling challenges due to the thin cross section and high thermal loads. In this study, a new wavy geometry for the TE has been proposed and analyzed using steady state numerical simulations. The wavy TE structure resembled a sinusoidal wave running along the span of the blade. The troughs on both pressure side and suction side contained the coolant exit slots. As a result, consecutive coolant exit slots provided an alternating discharge between the suction side and the pressure side of the blade. Steady state conjugate heat transfer simulations were carried out using CFX solver for four coolant to mainstream mass flow ratios of 0.45%, 1%, 1.5% and 3%. The temperature distribution and film cooling effectiveness in the TE region were compared to two conventional geometries, pressure side cutback and centerline ejection which are widely used in vanes and blades for both land-based and aviation gas turbine engines. Unstructured mesh was generated for both fluid and solid domains and interfaces were defined between the two domains. For turbulence closer, SST-kω model was used. The wall y+ was maintained < 1 by using inflation layers at all the solid fluid interfaces. The numerical results depicted that the alternating discharge from the wavy TE was able to form protective film coverage on both the pressure and suction side of the blade. As a result, significant reduction in the TE metal was observed which was up to 14% lower in volume averaged temperature in the TE region when compared to the two baseline conventional configurations.


Author(s):  
Shashank Shetty ◽  
Xianchang Li ◽  
Ganesh Subbuswamy

Due to the unique role of gas turbine engines in power generation and aircraft propulsion, significant effort has been made to improve the gas turbine performance. As a result, the turbine inlet temperature is usually elevated to be higher than the metal melting point. Therefore, effective cooling of gas turbines is a critical task for engines’ efficiency as well as safety and lifetime. Film cooling has been used to cool the turbine blades for many years. The main issues related to film cooling are its poor coverage, aerodynamic loss, and increase of heat transfer coefficient due to strong mixing. To overcome these problems, film cooling with backward injection has been found to produce a more uniform cooling coverage under low pressure and temperature conditions and with simple cylindrical holes. Therefore, the focus of this paper is on the performance of film cooling with backward injection at gas turbine operating conditions. By applying numerical simulation, it is observed that along the centerline on both concave and convex surfaces, the film cooling effectiveness decreases with backward injection. However, cooling along the span is improved, resulting in more uniform cooling.


2020 ◽  
Vol 143 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdel Rahman Salem ◽  
Farah Nazifa Nourin ◽  
Mohammed Abousabae ◽  
Ryoichi S. Amano

Abstract Internal cooling of gas turbine blades is performed with the combination of impingement cooling and serpentine channels. Besides gas turbine blades, the other turbine components such as turbine guide vanes, rotor disks, and combustor wall can be cooled using jet impingement cooling. This study is focused on jet impingement cooling, in order to optimize the coolant flow, and provide the maximum amount of cooling using the minimum amount of coolant. The study compares between different nozzle configurations (in-line and staggered), two different Reynold's numbers (1500 and 2000), and different stand-off distances (Z/D) both experimentally and numerically. The Z/D considered are 3, 5, and 8. In jet impingement cooling, the jet of fluid strikes perpendicular to the target surface to be cooled with high velocity to dissipate the heat. The target surface is heated up by a direct current (DC) power source. The experimental results are obtained by means of thermal image processing of the captured infra-red (IR) thermal images of the target surface. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis were employed to predict the complex heat transfer and flow phenomena, primarily the line-averaged and area-averaged Nusselt number and the cross-flow effects. In the current investigation, the flow is confined along with the nozzle plate and two parallel surfaces forming a bi-directional channel (bi-directional exit). The results show a comparison between heat transfer enhancement with in-line and staggered nozzle arrays. It is observed that the peaks of the line-averaged Nusselt number (Nu) become less as the stand-off distance (Z/D) increases. It is also observed that the fluctuations in the stagnation heat transfer are caused by the impingement of the primary vortices originating from the jet nozzle exit.


Author(s):  
M. Eifel ◽  
V. Caspary ◽  
H. Ho¨nen ◽  
P. Jeschke

This paper presents the effects of major geometrical modifications to the interior of a convection cooled gas turbine rotor blade. The analysis of the flow is performed experimentally with flow visualization via paint injection into water whereas the flow and the heat transfer are investigated numerically with Ansys CFX utilizing the SST turbulence model. Two sets of calculations are carried out, one under the same conditions as the experiments and another according to realistic hot gas conditions with conjugate heat transfer. The aim is to identify flow phenomena altering the heat transfer in the blade and to manipulate them in order to reduce the thermal load of the material. The operating point of the geometric base configuration is set to Re = 50,000 at the inlet while for the modified geometries the pressure ratio is held constant compared to the base. Flow structures and heat transfer conditions are evaluated and are linked to specific geometric features. Among several investigated configurations one could be identified that leads to a cooling effectiveness 15% larger compared to the base.


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