Abstract:
The demand for high power in aircraft gas turbine engines as well as
industrial gas turbine prime mover promotes increasing the turbine entry
temperature, the mass flow rate and the overall pressure ratio. High
turbine entry temperature is however the most convenient way to increase
the thrust without requiring a large change in the engine size.
This research is focused on improving the internal cooling of high pressure
turbine blade by investigating a range of solutions that can contribute to
the more effective removal of heat when compared with existing
configuration. The role played by the shape of the internal blade passages
is investigated with numerical methods. In addition, the application of mist
air as a means of enhanced heat removal is studied.
The research covers three main area of investigation. The first one is
concerned with the supply of mist on to the coolant flow as a mean to
enhancing heat transfer. The second area of investigation is the
manipulation of the secondary flow through cross-section variation as a
means to augment heat transfer. Lastly a combination of a number of
geometrical features in the passage is investigated.
A promising technique to significantly improve heat transfer is to inject
liquid droplets into the coolant flow. The droplets which will evaporate after
travelling a certain distance, act as a cooling sink which consequently
promote added heat removal. Due to the promising results of mist cooling
in the literature, this research investigated its effect on a roughened
cooling passage with five levels of mist mass percentages.
In order to validate the numerical model, two stages were carried out.
First, one single-phase flow case was validated against experimental
results available in the open literature. Analysing the effect of the rotational
force, on both flow physics and heat transfer, on the ribbed channel was
the main concern of this investigation. Furthermore, the computational results using mist injection were also validated against the experimental
results available in the literature.
Injection of mist in the coolant flow helped achieve up to a 300% increase
in the average flow temperature of the stream, therefore in extracting
significantly more heat from the wall. The Nusselt number increased by
97% for the rotating leading edge at 5% mist injection.
In the case of air only, the heat transfers decrease in the second passage,
while in the mist case, the heat transfer tends to increase in the second
passage. Heat transfer increases quasi linearly with the increase of the
mist percentage when there is no rotation. However, in the presence of
rotation, the heat transfers increase with an increase in mist content up to
4%, thereafter the heat transfer whilst still rising does so more gradually.
The second part of this research studies the effect of non-uniform cross-
section on the secondary flow and heat transfer in order to identify a
preferential design for the blade cooling internal passage. Four different
cross-sections were investigated. All cases start with square cross-section
which then change all the way until it reaches the 180 degree turn before it
changes back to square cross-section at the outlet. All cases were
simulated at four different speeds. At low speeds the rectangle and
trapezoidal cross-section achieved high heat transfer. At high speed the
pentagonal and rectangular cross-sections achieved high heat transfer.
Pressure loss is accounted for while making use of the thermal
performance factor parameter which accounts for both heat transfer and
pressure loss. The pentagonal cross-section showed high potential in
terms of the thermal performance factor with a value over 0.8 and higher
by 33% when compared to the rectangular case.
In the final section multiple enhancement techniques are combined in the
sudden expansion case, such as, ribs, slots and ribbed slot. The maximum
heat enhancement is achieved once all previous techniques are used
together. Under these circumstances the Nusselt number increased by
60% in the proposed new design.