Heat transfer over rotating surfaces is of particular interest in rotating machinery such as gas turbine engines. The rotation of the gas turbine disc creates a radially outward flow on the disc surface, which may lead to ingress of hot gases into the narrow cavity between the disc and the stator. Impingement of cooling jet is an effective way of cooling the disc and countering the ingress of the hot gases. Present study focusses on investigating the effect of introducing pin-fins over the rotating disc on the heat transfer. The jet Reynolds number has been varied from 5000 to 18000, and the rotating Reynolds number has been varied from 5487 to 12803 for an aluminum disc of thickness 6.35mm and diameter 10.16 cm, over which square pins have been arranged in an inline fashion. Steady state temperature measurements have been taken using thermocouples embedded in the disc close to the target surface, and area average Nusselt number has been calculated. The effects of varying the height of the pin-fins, distance between nozzle and the disc surface and the inclination of the impinging jet with the axis of rotation have also been studied. The results have been compared with those for a smooth aluminum disc of equal dimensions and without any pin-fins. The average Nusselt number is significantly enhanced by the presence of pin fins. In the impingement dominant regime, where the effect of disc rotation is minimal for a smooth disc, the heat transfer increases with rotational speed in case of pin fins. The effect of inclination angle of the impinging jet is insignificant in the range explored in this paper (0° to 20°).

In the jets array cooling system of the gas turbine, the downstream jets will be deflected by the crossflow and the heat transfer in the downstream will be suppressed. In this paper, the rectangular vortex generators are arranged in the jet arrays to enhance the jet impingement heat transfer. Through the numerical simulations, the configuration of rectangular vortex generators (Common-flow-down CFD and Common-flow-up CFU) and the relative position (l 2 ) between the impingements and the rectangular vortex generators are studied. The results show that both of configurations are beneficial to the suppression of the crossflow and enhance the heat transfer in the downstream. The maximum enhancement of the whole regional average Nusselt numbers in CFD-VGs configuration can reach up to 9.09% with lower than 5% increase of the pressure loss and that in CFU-VGs configuration can reach up to 10.8% with lower than 4.8% increase of the pressure loss. From the perspective of the whole regional average Nusselt numbers and the overall thermal efficiency, the CFD-VGs with l 2 = 0 has the best performance. However, from the perspective of the whole regional average Nusselt numbers, the CFU-VGs with l 2 = 0 has the best performance, while from the perspective of the overall thermal efficiency, the CFU-VGs with l 2 = 3 has the best performance.

Laminated cooling is deemed as one of the most potential and novel cooling technologies for turbine blade to increase turbine inlet temperature, which combines the superiority of film cooling, pin fin cooling and impingement cooling. To realize optimal design, the multidisciplinary design optimization of laminated cooling configuration is conducted considering cooling performance under acceptable pressure loss and thermomechanical performance. A coupled multidisciplinary analysis model is established to perform aerodynamical analysis, heat transfer analysis and thermomechanical analysis. Based on parametrized laminated model and Design of Experiments method, the cooling effectiveness, pressure loss coefficient and maximum stress can be obtained under different design parameters and their dominated design variables can be clarified. Using these sampling points, a Kriging approximation surrogate model can be established to replace real numerical calculation process and balance the efficiency and fidelity. Finally, the multi-island genetic algorithm is used to find the maximum cooling effectiveness and minimum pressure loss under the constraint of maximum stress. Results shows that, the dilation of film hole diameter, pin fin diameter and impingement hole diameter and the reduction of target plate thickness can effectively improve cooling performance and meanwhile decrease maximum stress, which can be up to 17.68% and 4.96% separately under the acceptable poressure loss coefficient raise of 16.8%. That can be attributed to the enhancement of inner heat transfer and improvement of outer film cooling.

Film cooling performance of the cylindrical film holes and the bifurcated film holes on the leading edge model of the turbine blade are investigated in this paper. The suitability of different turbulence models to predict local and average film cooling effectiveness is validated by comparing with available experimental results. Three rows of holes are arranged in a semi-cylindrical model to simulate the leading edge of the turbine blade. Four different film cooling structures (including a cylindrical film holes and other three different bifurcated film holes) and four different blowing ratios are studied in detail. The results show that the film jets lift off gradually in the leading edge area as the blowing ratio increases. And the trajectory of the film jets gradually deviate from the mainstream direction to the spanwise direction. The cylindrical film holes and vertical bifurcated film holes have better film cooling effectiveness at low blowing ratio while the other two transverse bifurcated film holes have better film cooling effectiveness at high blowing ratio. And the film cooling effectiveness of the transverse bifurcated film holes increase with the increasing the blowing ratio. Additionally, the advantage of transverse bifurcated holes in film cooling effectiveness is more obvious in the downstream region relative to the cylindrical holes. The Area-Average film cooling effectiveness of transverse bifurcated film holes is 38% higher than that of cylindrical holes when blowing ratio is 2.

A numerical study has been performed to validate the multiphase CFD model (DPM) by comparing its results to the experimental data of an air/mist film cooling study. The complete experimental test section was simulated including all the details including all the five holes, side walls effect, partially opened top wall, the conjugate bottom wall, the initial droplet distributions from the actual data, and the long boundary layer developing region upstream of the cooling holes. The effects of different particle distributions, the breakup and coalescence models, and the conjugate wall on the adiabatic film cooling effectiveness were investigated. The multiphase CFD model employs an Eulerian-Lagrangian approach. The Eulerian method is used for the continuous phase including air and water vapor and the Lagrangian method in terms of the discrete phase model (DPM) is used to simulate the dispersed phase (e.g., mist or liquid droplets) in a continuous phase (e.g., air). The overall consistency between the computational prediction and experimental data is within 0.2% for the air-only case and 7% for the mist case. The results showed that considering the wall using the conjugate heat transfer technique significantly provided better agreement with the experimental data than without including the wall. The non-uniform particle distribution provided better agreement with the experimental results near the film cooling hole exit.

Heat transfer measurements in transitional flat plate boundary layers subjected to surface roughness, strong pressure gradients and free stream turbulence are presented. The surfaces considered, consist of a smooth reference and twenty six deterministic surface topographies that vary in roughness element aspect ratio, height and density. They are designed to cover the full range of roughness regimes from smooth over transitionally rough to fully rough. For each surface, two pressure distributions, characteristic for a suction and a pressure side turbine vane, are investigated. Inlet Reynolds numbers range from 3.0 · 10 5 to 6.0 · 10 5 and inlet turbulence intensity is varied between 1% to 8%. Furthermore, different turbulence Reynolds numbers, i.e. turbulence length scales, are realized while the incident turbulence intensity is kept constant. Additionally, the turbulence intensity and Reynolds stress distributions in the free-stream along the flat plate are measured using x-wire probes. Results show a strong influence of roughness and turbulence intensity on the onset of transition. The new data set is used to develop an improved correlation considering the roughness height, density and shape as well as the turbulence intensity and turbulent length scales.

This paper describes a numerical investigation to study the effect of injecting mist (tiny water droplets, micrometers in size) into the cooling airstream to cool down gas turbine vanes. In this study, the conjugate heat transfer method is employed which consists of the simulation of the air/mist fluid flow inside and outside the vanes as well as the heat conduction through the vane body. The complete 3-D vane with internal cooling passages and external film cooling holes on the surface is simulated in a rotational periodic sector. The discrete phase model (DPM) is used to simulate and track the evaporation and movement of the tiny water droplets. The effects of different parameters such as the mist/air ratio (10–20%) and the mist droplets size (20–50μm) on mist cooling enhancement are investigated. The results show that by using a mist/air ratio of 10%, 15%, and 20% with 20 μm droplets size, on the pressure side, a maximum wall temperature reduction of 250 K, 340 K, and 450 K respectively can be achieved. On the suction side, the corresponding maximum wall temperature reductions are 160 K, 260 K, and 360 K, respectively. Using larger droplets of 50μm did not achieve better cooling enhancement because the droplets were rushed far away from the surface by the acceleration through the film cooling holes. Using the uniform droplet size distribution provides noticeably better cooling enhancement in the first 40% of the vane’s height (from the shroud) than the non-uniform droplet size distribution (Rosin-Rammler Distribution) does.

Steady state experimental work has been carried out to compare a conventional single jet of diameter 12.7mm with a swirling impinging jet. In this study swirl inserts with three different twist ratios 3, 4.5 and 6 were used to induce the swirling motion to the working fluid. The Reynolds number based on conventional impinging jet’s diameter is varied from 10000 to 16000. It is observed that with increase in twist ratio, the average heat transfer enhancement is reduced. However, with higher twist ratios more uniform distribution of heat transfer enhancement is observed.

Simulations of film cooling in the near field (x/D < 15) of coolant jets on a flat plate are carried out with detached eddy simulation (DES) and modified DES models. The time-averaged unsteady film cooling effectiveness is compared with experimental data. Both models use two-layer zonal model for near-wall treatment. The near field critical turbulent flow behaviors such as mainstream entrainment, spanwise spreading of counter rotating vortex pair (CRVP), and vortical structure evolutions are predicted and analyzed by DES and modified DES in this study. Modified DES model differs from the DES by implementing an increased eddy viscosity in the spanwise direction to enhance spanwise-diffusion of film cooling jets. Detailed comparisons of DES and modified DES modeling results are made under density ratios of 2.0, 1.6, 1.2 and blowing ratio of 1.0 for a single hole. Modified DES model predicts a wider spanwise spreading of temperature field and film cooling effectiveness. In a comparison of spanwise-averaged film cooling effectiveness with experimental data, DES and modified DES models predict 14.8% and 10.4% deviations under density ratio of 2.0. For density ratio of 1.2, the DES and modified DES results deviate from data 24.5% and 14.7% respectively. Then simulation of film cooling with a three hole domain is also carried out. Instantaneous effectiveness results show that the jets from nearby film cooling holes start to interact with each other before x/D < 10. When the interactions of flow from film cooling holes next to each other are strong, simulations using several cooling holes are meaningful and the current study shows the difference of multi hole and single hole simulations.

In modern gas turbines, film cooling is the most common and efficient way to provide thermal protection for hot components. Secondary holes to a primary film cooling hole are used to improve film cooling performance by creating anti-kidney vortices, a technique that has been well documented using flat plate models. This study aims to evaluate the effects of secondary holes on film cooling effectiveness over an airfoil. The film cooling performance and flow fields of a row of primary holes with secondary holes on the pressure side and suction side of a C3X vane are numerically investigated and compared with the results of a single row of cylindrical holes and two rows of staggered cylindrical holes. Cases with different blowing ratios are analyzed. It is shown from the simulation that film cooling effectiveness of primary holes with secondary holes is much better than with a single row of cylindrical holes, and slightly better than with two rows of staggered holes on both pressure side and suction side, with the same amount of coolant usage and blowing ratio. The enhancement is higher on the pressure side than on the suction side. The results show that adding secondary holes can enhance film cooling effectiveness by creating anti-kidney vortices, which will weaken jet lift-off from the primary holes caused by the kidney vortex pair, especially at higher blowing ratios. In addition, film coverage of primary holes with secondary holes is wider and persists further downstream than for a single row of cylindrical holes.

The effective use of coolant in maintaining gas turbine components below failure limits is becoming increasingly necessary in view of increasing combustor exit temperatures. Incorporating coolant impingement in a pin-finned channel provides an avenue for increased heat transfer. Two types of cooling configuration are modeled and compared: case 1: with the jet impinging in a cut out region behind a pin-fin (thus sheltering the jet from crossflow effects), and case 2: with the jet impinging further downstream along the next row of pin-fin and downstream of the wake region of the upstream pin-fin. In the current work, a Large Eddy Simulation (LES) study is conducted for a Reynolds number of 7500. All other geometrical and flow parameters are kept similar in both the configurations to enable a direct comparison. Since the stagnation point Nusselt number is not affected by the cross-flow in the sheltered configuration, there is enhanced cooling as compared to the configuration in which the jet impinges further downstream and is not protected from the crossflow. In this paper, the flow field, the jet-crossflow interactions and the heat transfer behavior are discussed for both the configurations.

In search of improved cooling of gas turbine blades, the thermal performances of two different film cooling hole geometries (horn-shaped and cylindrical) are investigated in this numerical study. The horn-shaped hole is designed from a cylindrical hole by expanding the hole in the transverse direction to double the hole size at the exit. The two hole shapes are evaluated singly and in tandem. The tandem geometry assumes three configurations made by locating the cylindrical hole at three different positions relative to the horn-shaped hole such that their two axes remain parallel to one another. One has the cylindrical hole downstream from the center of the horn-shaped hole, a second has the cylindrical hole to the left of (as seen by the flow emerging from the horn-shaped hole) and at the same streamwise location as the horn-shaped hole (θ = 90°) and the third has an intermediate geometry between those two geometries (downstream and to the left of the horn-shaped hole - θ = 45°). It is shown from the simulation results that the cooling effectiveness values for the θ = 45° and 90° cases are much better than that for θ = 0° (the first case), and the configuration with θ = 45° exhibits the best cooling performance of the three tandem arrangements. These improvements are attributed to the interaction of vortices from the two different holes, which weakens the counter-rotating vortex pairs inherent to film cooling jet to freestream interaction, counteracts with the lift forces, enhances transverse tensile forces and, thus, enlarges the film coverage zone by widening the flow attachment region. Overall, this research reveals that integration of horn-shaped and cylindrical holes provides much better film cooling effectiveness than cases where two cylindrical film cooling holes are applied with the same tandem configuration.

In the present study, a flow visualization and heat transfer investigation is carried out computationally on a flat plate with 10×1 array of impinging jets from a corrugated plate. This corrugated structure is an Anti-Cross Flow (ACF) technique which is proved to nullify the negative effects of cross-flow thus enhancing the overall cooling performance. Governing equations are solved using k-ω Shear Stress Transport (SST) turbulence model in commercial code FLUENT. The parameter variation considered for the present study are (i) three different heights of ACF corrugate (C/D = 1, 2 & 3) and (ii) two different jet-to-target plate spacing (H/D = 1 & 2). The dependence of ACF structure performance on the corrugate height (C/D) and the flow structure has been discussed in detail, therefore choosing an optimum corrugate height and visualizing the three-dimensional flow phenomena are the main objectives of the present study. The three-dimensional flow separation and heat transfer characteristics are explained with the help of skin friction lines, upwash fountains, wall eddies, counter-rotating vortex pair (CRVP), and plots of Nusselt number. It is found that the heat transfer performance is high at larger corrugate heights for both the jet-to-plate spacing. Moreover, the deterioration of the skin friction pattern corresponding to the far downstream impingement zones is greatly reduced with ACF structure, retaining more uniform heat transfer pattern even at low H/D values where the crossflow effects are more dominant in case of the conventional cooling structure. In comparison of the overall heat transfer performance the difference between C/D = 3 & C/D = 2 for H/D = 2 is significantly less, thus making the later as the optimal configuration in terms of reduced channel height.

The need for higher turbine efficiency has been constantly pushing the turbine inlet temperatures to elevated levels. Hot gas path temperatures are much higher than the typical blade material yield temperature. Efficient internal cooling technologies are required for safe operation of gas turbine. Several internal cooling technologies have been developed in order to enhance the heat transfer from relatively hotter walls of turbine blade. For mid-chord region of turbine blade, rib turbulators are typically installed in multi-pass channels. Rib turbulators trip the boundary layer, induce secondary flows which enhance near wall shear as well as enhance turbulent mixing when they interact with surrounding walls. Research has been carried out on several aspects of rib turbulated passages in order to achieve higher thermal hydraulic performance. Generally, rib turbulators are installed on two opposite walls of serpentine passages in order to enhance heat transfer from both pressure and suction sides of blade through coolant flowing through complicated paths. Typical arrangement of rib turbulators were parallel to each other or having some offset from each other. In the present study, an attempt has been made to arrange 45° angled ribs in a way that they form a Criss-Cross pattern. Two ribbed configurations with Criss-Cross pattern - Inline and staggered, have been studied where the baseline case was smooth duct with no rib turbulators. The effective rib-pitch-to-rib-height ratio (p/e) was 8.6 and rib-height-to-channel-hydraulic diameter ratio (e/d h ) was 0.1. The channel had a total length of 20 hydraulic diameters and the rib turbulators were installed at a distance of six hydraulic diameters from the inlet of the test section to allow flow development. Detailed heat transfer coefficients were measured using transient liquid crystal thermography employing 1D semi-infinite conduction model. Globally averaged Nusselt numbers are calculated from the detailed measurements and thermal hydraulic performance of configurations have been reported with respect to Reynolds number. The aim of this study was to develop a cooling configuration which has higher thermal-hydraulic performance compared to other traditional rib configurations. It has been found that the heat transfer characteristics of the inline and staggered configurations were similar to each other and ranged between three times D-B correlation to 2.7 times, for Reynolds number ranging from 30000 to 60000. Inline configuration had relatively lower frictional losses, however the thermal hydraulic performances of both the configurations were similar.

The focus of this research is to predict the flow and heat transfer in a rotating two-pass duct geometry with staggered ribs using Large-Eddy Simulations (LES). The geometry consists of a U-Bend with 17 ribs in each pass. The ribs are staggered with an e/D h = 0.1 and P/e = 10. LES is performed at a Reynolds number of 100,000, a rotation number of 0.2 and buoyancy parameters (Bo) of 0.5 and 1.0. The effects of Coriolis forces and centrifugal buoyancy are isolated and studied individually. In all cases it is found that increasing Bo from 0.5 to 1.0 at Ro = 0.2 has little impact on heat transfer. It is found that in the first pass, the heat transfer is quite receptive to Coriolis forces which augment and attenuate heat transfer at the trailing and leading walls, respectively. Centrifugal buoyancy, on the other hand has a bigger effect in augmenting heat transfer at the trailing wall than in attenuating heat transfer at the leading wall. On contrary, it aids heat transfer in the second half of the first pass at the leading wall by energizing the flow near the wall. The heat transfer in the second pass is dominated by the highly turbulent flow exiting the bend. Coriolis forces have no impact on the augmentation of heat transfer on the leading wall till the second half of the passage whereas it attenuates heat transfer at the trailing wall as soon as the flow exits the bend. Contrary to phenomenological arguments, inclusion of centrifugal buoyancy augments heat transfer over Coriolis forces alone on both the leading and trailing walls of the second pass.

The convection heat transfer coefficient on a film-cooled flat plate with and without upstream surface heating is investigated using liquid crystal thermography. The experiments were conducted with a turbulent boundary layer and low freestream turbulence at mass flux ratios of 0.5, 1.0, and 1.5 and density ratio of unity, using cylindrical holes at a 30° injection angle. Results show that upstream surface heating produces a lower convective heat transfer coefficient as expected, and the spanwise-averaged heat transfer enhancement factor is increased by up to 5% over approximately 60% of the film-cooled region. As blowing ratio increased, this area of increased enhancement factor moved further downstream of the holes.

This paper reports experimental and computational studies of flow and heat transfer through a square duct with a sharp 180 degree turn. The main purpose of this research is to study flow and heat transfer predictions of the Analytical Wall-Function (AWF). To compare the predicting performance of the AWF, the standard Log-Law Wall-Function (LWF) and Low-Reynolds-number (LRN) k-ε model were applied. Their results were also compared with the experimental results for validation. In addition, three extended forms of the AWF were tested. Computational results showed better agreement with the experimental data, especially after the turn of the channel. It was also found that the wall-function (WF) models predicted more reasonable results as Reynolds number increased. The both wall-function models predicted similar results except for separation/reattachment regions where the LWF predicted lower Nusselt number than the other models.

The present work studies the relationship between target and sidewall surfaces of a single row impingement channel at various jet-to-target distances. Temperature sensitive paint and constant flux heaters are used to gather heat transfer data on the target and side walls. Jet-to-target distance is set to 1, 2, 3, 5, 7 and 9 jet diameters. The spanwise jet spacing is 4 jet diameters and the streamwise jet spacing is 5 jet diameters. All cases were run at average jet Reynolds numbers ranging from 5,000 to 30,000. Pressure data is also gathered and used to calculate the channels mass flux profiles, used to better understand the flow characteristics of the impingement channel. While target plate heat transfer profiles have been thoroughly studied in the literature, side wall data has only recently begun to be studied. The present work shows the significant impact the side walls provide to the overall heat transfer capabilities of the impingement channel. When only the target wall heat transfer is considered, the Z/D = 2 channel performs the best; however, it was found that, when both the target and side wall channels were taken into account, the Z/D = 3 channel provides with the largest overall heat transfer rate through the target wall and the side walls out of all channel heights.

A physical flow model of a gas turbine (GT) simple-cycle Selective-Catalytic-Reduction (SCR) system was constructed to a 1/16 geometric scale to validate computational fluid dynamics (CFD) predictions and examine the impact of tempering air injection on system performance. Repeatable velocity contours and tempering air dispersion profiles were developed for baseline (no tempering air), and 12- and 6-lance tempering air injector configurations. The conclusions from the study are: (1) relative to the no lance baseline case, the 12-lance configuration tends to force more of the inlet flow towards the top of the duct, whereas the 6-lance configuration does not affect the upstream profile significantly, (2) adding tempering air does not have a significant impact on the diffuser inlet velocity distribution and has a minor effect on the velocity and dispersion profiles at the NO X -catalyst inlet, (3) at the NO X -catalyst inlet, the 6-lance configuration with tempering air exhibits a slightly skewed flow toward the lower right corner of the duct with a coefficient of variation (COV) of 19.4%, which is slightly better than that for the 12-lance configuration, (4) at the NO X -catalyst inlet, the 12-lance configuration disperses tempering air best because its COV is 20.8% relative to a 27.3% COV for the 6-lance configuration, and (5) a comparison between the local mixing-cup temperature contours for both 12- and 6-lance configurations, based on tracer injection into the tempering air flow, confirms that the CFD model does a good job of qualitatively predicting the heat and mass transport processes in the GT simple-cycle SCR system.

An advanced, high-effectiveness film-cooling design, the anti-vortex hole (AVH) has been investigated by several research groups and shown to mitigate or counter the vorticity generated by conventional holes and increase film effectiveness at high blowing ratios and low freestream turbulence levels. [1, 2] The effects of increased turbulence on the AVH geometry were previously investigated and presented by researchers at West Virginia University (WVU), in collaboration with NASA, in a preliminary CFD study [3] on the film effectiveness and net heat flux reduction (NHFR) at high blowing ratio and elevated freestream turbulence levels for the adjacent AVH. The current paper presents the results of an extended numerical parametric study, which attempts to separate the effects of turbulence intensity and length-scale on film cooling effectiveness of the AVH. In the extended study, higher freestream turbulence intensity and larger scale cases were investigated with turbulence intensities of 5, 10 and 20% and length scales based on cooling hole diameter of Λ x /d m = 1, 3 and 6. Increasing turbulence intensity was shown to increase the centerline, span-averaged and area-averaged adiabatic film cooling effectiveness. Larger turbulent length scales were shown to have little to no effect on the centerline, span-averaged and area-averaged adiabatic film-cooling effectiveness at lower turbulence levels, but slightly increased effect at the highest turbulence levels investigated.