Optimization of a Large Number of Coolant Passages Located Close to the Surface of a Turbine Blade

A constrained optimization of locations and discrete radii of a large number of small circular cross-section straight-through coolant flow passages in internally cooled gas turbine vane was developed. The objective of the optimization was minimization of the integrated surface heat flux penetrating the airfoil thus indirectly minimizing the amount of coolant needed for the removal of this heat. Constraints were that the maximum temperature of any point in the vane is less than the maximum specified value and that the distances between any two holes or between any hole and the airfoil surface are greater than the minimum specified value. A configuration with maximum of 30 passages was considered. The presence of external hot gas and internal coolant was approximated by using convection boundary conditions for the heat conduction analysis. A parallel three-dimensional thermoelasticity finite element analysis (FEA) code from the ADVENTURE project at University of Tokyo was used to perform automatic thermal analysis of different vane configurations. A robust semi-stochastic constrained optimizer and a parallel genetic algorithm (PGA) were used to solve this problem using an inexpensive distributed memory parallel computer.