3-D Internal Flow and Conjugate Calculations of a Convective Cooled Turbine Blade With Serpentine-Shaped and Ribbed Channels

Modern cooling configurations for turbine blades include complex serpentine-shaped cooling channel geometries for internal-forced convective cooling. The channels are ribbed in order to enhance the convective beat transfer. The design of such cooling configurations is within the power of modem CFD-codes with combined heat transfer analysis in solid body regions. One approach is the conjugate fluid flow and heat transfer solver, CHT-Flow, developed at the Institute of Steam and Gas Turbines, Aachen University of Technology. It takes into account of the mutual influences of internal and external fluid flow and heat transfer. The strategy of the procedure is based on a multi-block-technique and a direct coupling module for fluid flow regions and solid body regions. The configuration under investigation in the present paper is based on a test design of a convective cooled turbine blade with serpentine-shaped cooling passages and cooling gas ejection at the blade tip and the trailing edge. The numerical investigations focus on secondary flow phenomena in the ducts and on the heat transfer analysis at the cooling channel walls. In the first part, the cooling channels are investigated with adiabatic smooth & ribbed walls. The calculations are carried out for the stationary and rotating configuration. Concerning the heat transfer analysis, the results of the ribbed configuration with a fixed thermal boundary condition at the walls in the stationary case are presented. Furthermore, in order to demonstrate the capability of the conjugate method to work without thermal boundary conditions, the cooling configuration is calculated including the external blade flow and the blade walls with internal and external heat transfer under typical operation conditions of gas turbines. The numerical code is used to determine the blade surface temperatures.

A Computational Visualization of Three Dimensional Flow: Finding Optimum Heat Transfer and Pressure Drop Characteristics From Short Cross-Pin Arrays and Comparison With Two Dimensional Calculations

There are many heat transfer augmentation methods that are employed in turbine blade design, such as impingement cooling, film cooling, serpentine passages, trip strips, vortex chambers, and pin fins. The use of crosspins in the trailing edge section of turbine blades is commonly a viable option due to their ability to promote turbulence as well as supply structural integrity and stiffness to the blade itself. Numerous crosspin shapes and arrangements are possible, but only certain configurations offer high heat transfer capability while maintaining taw total pressure loss. This study preseots results from 3-D numerical simulations of airflow through a turbine blade internal cooling passage. The simulations model viscous flow and heat transfer over full crosspins of circular cross-section with fixed height-to-diameter ratio of 0.5, fixed transverse-to-diameter spacing ratio of 1.5, and varying streamwise spacing. Preliminary analysis indicates that endwall effects dominate the flow and heat transfer at lower Reynolds numbers. The flow dynamics involved with the relative dose proximity of the endwalls for such short crosspins have a definite influeoce on crosspin efficiency for downstream rows.

The 701F Gas Turbine Design Process: Upgrade and Innovations

In this paper, a Fiat Avio 701F gas turbine re-design process is presented. This already tested gas turbine has been modified, for a particular re-powering application: a reduction in the net power production is required, whereas efficiency and exhaust temperature have been improved by mean of increased hot gas temperature at the first nozzle inlet section. Consequently this re-powering solution clearly requires consistent re-design efforts to satisfy specific plant operating conditions. The gas turbine power output has been tuned to the required value by reducing the air inlet mass flowrate; the combustion chamber setting has been modified with particular attention to the control of pollutant emission level. The increase of inlet stator turbine temperature necessitated a complete review of the three cooled turbine stages. The aim of greater overall efficiency with inlet and exit turbine temperature increase also involved the introduction of a new blade material. For design tool flexibility the blade cooling design procedure has been improved making better optimization of the cooling system possible. In this paper a detailed description of the several gas turbine modifications with particular attention to the blade cooling design procedure and to the corresponding simulation results is reported. The modifications developed could also be introduced on the new version of the 701F, at full power capability, in order to get better efficiency and power.

Up-Rated Reheat Gas Turbine for the Repowering of Steam Power Plants

In the present paper, a thermoeconomic analysis of combined cycles derived from existing steam power plants is performed. The gas turbine employed is a reheat gas turbine. The increase of the two combustor outlet temperatures was also investigated. The study reveals that the transformation of old conventional fossil fuel power plants in combined cycle power plants with reheat gas turbine supplies a cost per kWh lower than that of a new combined cycle power plant, also equipped with reheat gas turbine. This occurs for all the repowered plants analyzed. Moreover, the solution of increasing the two combustor outlet temperatures resulted a strategy to pursue, leading, in particular, to a lower cost per kWh, Pay Back Period and to a greater Internal Rate of Return.

Heat Transfer Enhancement in Triangular Ducts With an Array of Side-Entry Wall/Impinged Jets

An experimental study has been performed to measure local heat transfer coefficients and static well pressure drops in leading-edge triangular ducts cooled by wall/impinged jets. Coolant provided by an array of equally spaced wall jets is aimed at the leading-edge apex and exits from the radial outlet. Detailed heat transfer coefficients are measured for the two walls forming the apex using transient liquid crystal technique. Secondary-flow structures are visualized to realize the mechanism of heat transfer enhancement by wall/impinged jets. Three right-triangular ducts of the same altitude and different apex angles of β = 30 deg (Duct A), 45 deg (Duct B) and 60 deg (Duct C) are tested for various jet Reynolds numbers (3000≦Rej≦12600) and jet spacings (s/d = 3.0 and 6.0). Results show that an increase in Rej increases the heat transfer on both walls. Local heat transfer on both walls gradually decreases downstream due to the crossflow effect. At the same Rej, the Duct C has the highest wall-averaged heat transfer because of the highest jet center velocity as well as the smallest jet inclined angle. Moreover, the distribution of static pressure drop based on the local through flow rate in the present triangular duct is similar to that that of developing straight pipe flows. Average jet Nusselt numbers on the both walls have been correlated with jet Reynolds number for three different duct shapes.

Local Swirl Chamber Heat Transfer and Flow Structure at Different Reynolds Numbers

Local flow behavior and heat transfer results are presented from two swirl chambers, which model passages used to cool the leading edges of turbine blades in gas turbine engines. Flow results are obtained in an isothermal swirl chamber. Surface Nusselt number distributions are measured in a second swirl chamber (with a constant wall beat flux boundary condition) using infrared thermography, in conjunction with thermocouples, energy balances, and in situ calibration procedures. In both cases, Reynolds numbers Re based on inlet duct characteristics range from 6000 to about 20000. Bulk helical flow is produced in each chamber by two inlets which ore tangent to the swirl chamber circumference. Important changes to local and globally-averaged surface Nusselt numbers, instantaneous flow structure from flow visualizations, and distributions of static pressure, total pressure, and circumferential velocity are observed throughout the swirl chambers as the Reynolds number increases. Of particular importance are increases of local surface Nusselt numbers (as well as ones globally-averaged over the entire swirl chamber surface) with increasing Reynolds number. These are tiad to increased advection, as well as important changes to vortex characteristics near the concave surfaces of the swirl chambers. Higher Re also give larger axial components of velocity, and increased turning of the flow from each inlet, which gives Görtler vnrtex pair trajectories greater skewness as they are advected downstream of each inlet.

Heat Transfer on a Film-Cooled Rotating Blade

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.

An Experimental Study on the Aerodynamics and the Heat Transfer of a Suction Side Film Cooled Large Scale Turbine Cascade

As a part of a more complex research program systematic isothermal investigations on the aerodynamics and heat transfer of a large scale turbine cascade with suction side film cooling were carried out. The film cooling through a row of holes at forty percent chord length on the suction side was supplied by a large plenum chamber. Two injection geometries were hitherto tested and evaluated: cylindrical holes with thirty respectively fifty degrees axial inclination angle and no lateral inclination. Typical engine conditions for the Mach and Reynolds number as well as the inlet turbulence level were maintained. The aerodynamic studies are based on steady state pressure measurements. The static profile pressure distribution together with oil-and-dye flow visualisation gives information on the surface flow conditions and boundary layer development especially in the near hole region. The measured data also comprise local and integral total pressure loss coefficients obtained by pressure probe traversing at mid span downstream of the cascade. The heat transfer examination set-up is based on the steady state liquid crystal technique using a compound of a thermochromic sheet combined with an electrical surface heating layer attached on an adiabatic blade corpus. Two dimensional pseudo colour plots are used for the documentation of the local surface heat transfer coefficient distribution and hot spot estimation. Laterally averaged and statistically analysed data of the surface heat transfer is applied in overall heat transfer examinations. All this data is used for a joint aerodynamic flow and surface heat transfer optimisation of a blowing configuration in suction side film cooled turbine cascade. The most important conclusions can be summarised as follows: Aiming at an optimised design of cylindrical film cooling configurations the axial inclination of the holes should be kept low thus diminishing the suction peak value at the cooling position in the profile pressure distribution and decreasing the mainstream deceleration area upstream of the jets. This also leads to reduced total pressure losses. Through the high influence of the blowing on the aerodynamics the flow in the near hole mixing region is highly three-dimensional. This shows significant effects in the two-dimensional surface distribution and the laterally averaged heat transfer coefficient. Oil-and-dye pictures confirm the observations qualitatively.

A Three-Dimensional Coupled Internal/External Simulation of a Film-Cooled Turbine Vane

A three-dimensional Navier-Stokes simulation has been performed for a realistic film-cooled turbine vane using the LeRC-HT code. The simulation includes the flow regions inside the coolant plena and film cooling holes in addition to the external flow. The vane is the subject of an upcoming NASA Lewis Research Center experiment and has both circular cross-section and shaped film cooling holes. This complex geometry is modeled using a multi-block grid which accurately discretizes the actual vane geometry including shaped holes. The simulation matches operating conditions for the planned experiment and assumes periodicity in the spanwise direction on the scale of one pitch of the film cooling hole pattern. Two computations were performed for different isothermal wall temperatures, allowing independent determination of heat transfer coefficients and film effectiveness values. The results indicate separate localized regions of high heat flux in the showerhead region due to low film effectiveness and high heat transfer coefficient values, while the shaped holes provide a reduction in heat flux through both parameters. Hole exit data indicate rather simple skewed profiles for the round holes, but complex profiles for the shaped holes with mass fluxes skewed strongly toward their leading edges.

High Resolution Measurements of Local Effectiveness by Discrete Hole Film Cooling

Local adiabatic film cooling effectiveness on a flat plate surface downstream a row of cylindrical holes was investigated. Geometrical parameters like blowing angle and hole pitch as well as the flow parameters blowing rate and density ratio were varied in a wide range emphasizing on engine relevant conditions. An IR-thermography technique was used to perform local measurements of the surface temperature field. A spatial resolution of up to 7 data points per hole diameter extending up to 80 hole diameters downstream of the ejection location was achieved. Since all technical surface materials have a finite thermoconductivity, no ideal adiabatic conditions could be established. Therefore, a procedure for correcting the measured surface temperature data based on a Finite Element analysis was developed. Heat loss over the backside of the testplate and remnant heat flux within the testplate in lateral and streamwise direction were taken into account. The local effectiveness patterns obtained are systematically analyzed to quantify the influence of the various parameters. As a result, a detailed description of the characteristics of local adiabatic film cooling effectiveness is given. Furthermore, the locally resolved experimental results can serve as a data base for the validation of CFD-codes predicting discrete hole film cooling.