Transient Heat Transfer Experiments in Complex Passages

Transient heat transfer experiments were performed in a model of a multi-pass gas turbine blade cooling circuit. The inner surface of the Plexiglas model was coated with thermochromic liquid crystals in order to determine the internal heat transfer coefficients. A change in inlet temperature is applied using a pre-cooled heat exchanger. As for simple geometries the analytical solution of Fourier’s equation can often be directly used for data evaluation, one ought to pay attention to complex passages. The reason has to be seen that the flow in complex passages has to be characterized by local and time dependent fluid temperatures. As a direct consequence data evaluation might be limited to small evaluation areas especially far downstream. Otherwise the uncertainties in the heat transfer results will increase substantially. In the present study the sensitivity of the transient method for complex passages has been analyzed theoretically and applied experimentally.