A review of recent studies on rotating internal cooling for gas turbine blades

Gas turbines have been used extensively for aircraft and marine propulsions as well as land-based power generation because of their high thermal efficiency and large power to weight ratios.To further increase the thermal efficiency,numerous prior researches on gas turbine blade internal cooling have been intensively carried out,majorly under stationary conditions.However,the stationary studies neglect the effects of Coriolis and buoyancy forces,which should change the velocity,turbulence and temperature distribution under rotating conditions.To elucidate the rotational effects on gas turbine internal cooling,the extensive results collected from recent investigations are discussed,which include the rotation and buoyancy effects on the rib turbulated cooling,pin fin cooling,jet impingement cooling,dimple/protrusion cooling,latticework cooling as well as swirl cooling.The rotational effects on the friction factors and the most employed experimental and numerical methods are also presented.Moreover,recommendations for future research are outlined.Therefore,this review article provides extensive literature information for the design of the next-generation high-efficiency internal cooling for rotating turbine blades.

Conjugate Heat Transfer Investigation on the Cooling Performance of Air Cooled Turbine Blade with Thermal Barrier Coating

A hot wind tunnel of annular cascade test rig is established for measuring temperature distribution on a real gas turbine blade surface with infrared camera.Besides,conjugate heat transfer numerical simulation is performed to obtain cooling efficiency distribution on both blade substrate surface and coating surface for comparison.The effect of thermal barrier coating on the overall cooling performance for blades is compared under varied mass flow rate of coolant,and spatial difference is also discussed.Results indicate that the cooling efficiency in the leading edge and trailing edge areas of the blade is the lowest.The cooling performance is not only influenced by the internal cooling structures layout inside the blade but also by the flow condition of the mainstream in the external cascade path.Thermal barrier effects of the coating vary at different regions of the blade surface,where higher internal cooling performance exists,more effective the thermal barrier will be,which means the thermal protection effect of coatings is remarkable in these regions.At the designed mass flow ratio condition,the cooling efficiency on the pressure side varies by 0.13 for the coating surface and substrate surface,while this value is 0.09 on the suction side.

Numerical Investigations on the Steady and Unsteady Leakage Flow and Heat Transfer Characteristics of Rotor Blade Squealer Tip

The steady and unsteady leakage flow and heat transfer characteristics of the rotor blade squealer tip were conducted by solving Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes （RANS） equations with k-co turbulence model. The first stage of GE-E3 engine with squealer tip in the rotor was adopted to perform this work. The tip clearance was set to be 1% of the rotor blade height and the groove depth was specified as 2% of the span. The results showed that there were two vortexes in the tip gap which determined the local heat transfer characteristics. In the steady flow field, the high heat transfer coefficient existed at several positions. In the unsteady case, the flow field in the squealer tip was mainly influenced by the upstream wake and the interaction of the blades potential fields. These unsteady effects induced the periodic variation of the leakage flow and the vortexes, which resulted in the fluctuation of the heat transfer coefficient. The largest fluctuation of the heat transfer coefficient on the surface of the groove bottom exceeded 16% of the averaged value on the surface of the squealer tip.