Aero Thermal Characteristics And Film Cooling Of Transonic Turbine Blade Tips

Author : Louis Edward Christensen
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (135 download)

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Download or read book Effects of Film Cooling on Turbine Blade Tip Flow Structures and Thermal Loading written by Louis Edward Christensen and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gas turbine engines are an essential technology in aviation and power generation. One of the challenges associated with increasing the efficiency of gas turbines is the thermal loading experienced by the engine components downstream of the combustors especially the high-pressure turbine blades. High temperatures and rotational velocities can cause blade failures in numerous ways such as creep or stress rupture. Technologies like film cooling are implemented in these components to lower the thermal loading and reduce the risk of failure. However, these introduce complexities into the flow which in turn increases the difficulty of predicting the performance of film cooled turbines. Accurately predicting the capabilities of these components is essential to prevent failure in gas turbine engines. Engineers use a combination of experiments and computational simulations to understand how these technologies perform and predict the operating conditions and lifespan of these components. A combined experimental and numerical program is performed on a single stage high-pressure turbine to increase understanding of film cooling in gas turbines and improve computational methods used to predict their performance. The turbine studied is a contemporary production model from Honeywell Aerospace with both cooled and uncooled turbine blades. The experimental work is performed at The Ohio State University Gas Turbine Laboratory Turbine Test Facility, a short duration facility operating at engine corrected conditions. The experiments capture heat flux, temperature, and pressure data across the entire blade, but this work will focus on the turbine blade tip data. Tip temperature data are captured using a high-speed infrared camera providing a unique data set unseen in the current literature. In addition to the experiments, transient conjugate heat transfer simulations of a single turbine passage are performed to recreate the experiments and give insight into the flow field in the tip region of the turbine blades. The experiments and simulations are conducted to provide a better understanding of the interactions of the film cooling and tip flows along with their relationship to the thermal loading on the turbine blade tip. Film cooling in the tip region adds complexity to the flow and a non-intuitive relationship exists between film cooling and thermal loading. Addition of cooling is not guaranteed to reduce the thermal loading on the blade tips. Cooling jets can displace hot gases protecting the blade, but they are also capable of shifting flow structures and trapping hot gases near the blade surface especially so in corners of the blade tips. These direct and indirect methods of altering the thermal loading open a new path to optimization where engineers consider how the coolant alters the flow in addition to forming a protective layer of cool gas. This can be done to more effectively use coolant not only in the blade tips but elsewhere on the turbine blades leading to higher engine efficiencies and more sustainable gas turbine engines.