Conjugate Heat Transfer Simulation of a Radially Cooled Gas Turbine Vane

A 3D conjugate heat transfer simulation of a radially cooled gas turbine vane has been performed using STAR-CD™ code and the metal temperature distribution of the blade has been obtained. The study focused on the linear NASA-C3X cascade, for which experimental data are available; the blade is internally cooled by air through ten radially oriented circular cross section channels. According to the chosen approach, boundary conditions for the conjugate analysis were specified only at the inlet and outlet planes and on the openings of the internal cooling channels: neither temperature distribution nor heat flux profile were assigned along the walls. Static pressure, external temperature and heat transfer coefficient distributions along the vane were compared with experimental data. In addition, in order to asses the impact of transition on heat transfer profile, just the external flow (supposed fully turbulent in the conjugate approach) was separately simulated with TRAF code too and the behaviour of the transitional boundary layer has been analyzed and discussed. Loading distributions were found to be in good agreement with experiments for both conjugate and non conjugate approaches, but, since both pressure and suction side exhibit a typical transitional behavior, HTC profiles obtained without taking into account transition severely overestimate experimental data especially near the leading edge. Results confirm the significant role of transition in predicting heat transfer and, therefore, vane temperature field when a conjugate analysis is performed.