Rotating Heat Transfer Experiments With Turbine Airfoil Internal Flow Passages

Internal convective cooling is used to maintain acceptable gas turbine rotor blade temperatures. The heat transfer from the blade coolant passage walls is governed by forced convection, Coriolis forces and buoyance due to wall and coolant temperature differences. Currently little data is available to designers regarding the combined effects of these three parameters. To obtain required data, a rotating heat transfer facility was developed for experiments with large scale models and run at rotation and flow parameters typical of current gas turbine operating conditions. Analysis of the equations of motion showed that the perinent nondimensional parameters were Reynolds number, Rossby number, the difference in wall fluid and bulk fluid density and geometric ratios. The models were instrumented to measure average heat transfer rates on the coolant passage wall elements, and with pressure taps for friction data. An initial set of experiments have been conducted with rough wall geometries, typical of those used in blades. Results from the rotating experiments showed large heat transfer coefficient increases and decreases on the coolant passage leading and trailing surfaces compared to nonrotating heat transfer coefficients. The heat transfer was shown to be a function of inward or outward flow direction and Rossby number for the experiments conducted.