Numerical Investigation on Flow and Heat Transfer in Matrix Cooling Channels for Turbine Blades

Matrix cooling is one kind of internal cooling structures applied to protect turbine blades. This paper investigated the flow field and heat transfer performance in matrix cooling channels experimentally and numerically. A testing section (rib angle of 45-deg, rib thickness of 30mm, rib height of 30mm and sub-channel width of 30mm) made of Plexiglas was build and connected to a wind tunnel sysytem. And Transient Liquid Crystal (TLC) technique was applied to obtain the detailed heat transfer distribution on the primary surface inside the matrix cooling channel. The experiment was performed under different Reynolds numbers varying from 18428 to 28327, based on the channel inlet hydraulic diameter; also the overall pressure drop across the channel was measured. Experimental results were used to calibrate the numerical solution obtained by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method. During the numerical simulation process, structured grids and k-w turbulence model was employed. And a good agreement is obtained between experimental and CFD results for both pressure drop and heat transfer performance. Channels of various structural parameters (rib angle, rib thickness and sub-channel width) were then studied by numerical simulation, three rib angles (30-deg, 45-deg and 60-deg), three rib thicknesses (1.8mm, 3mm and 5mm) and three sub-channel widths (3mm, 5mm and 9mm) were considered, with the rib height 3mm for all the cases. Numerical results showed that the sidewall turnings made the greatest contribution to heat transfer enhancement but caused very large pressure drop meanwhile. The overall heat transfer and pressure drop increase with rib angle and rib width but decrease with sub-channel width. The thermal performance factor decreases with rib angle and rib width, while it showed a non-monotonic dependency on sub-channel width. Among the three structural parameters, rib angle has the most significant effect on the performance of matrix cooling channel.