Experimental investigation of heat transfer and flow characteristics in various geometries of 2-pass internal cooling passages of gas turbine airfoils

An experimental investigation of the flow and heat transfer characteristics in internal coolant passages of gas turbine airfoils has been conducted. The PIV method was employed for the flow measurements. A stereoscopic PIV system was used and automated. The stereoscopic method allowed measuring the three velocity components in measurement planes. The system was capable of measuring 100 planes in each configuration. Each measurement plane was composed of 30*30 measurement points. The transient liquid crystal technique was adopted for the heat transfer measurements. Full surface Nusselt number distributions were obtained on all the five outer walls of the test models. The transient TLC technique was adapted in large-scale models of internal cooling channels. The gas temperature evolution in location and time was taken into account in the data processing. CFD simulations have been performed in the measured passage configurations. For the calculations, the unstructured flow solver FLUENT/UNS was employed. A test rig was designed and constructed for the experiments to meet the requirements of the intended investigation. For the present investigation, the test section was a large-scale model of a two-pass coolant passage with a sharp 180° bend. Four different coolant passage configurations were tested: A passage with 45° ribs (baseline configuration). A passage similar to the baseline configuration with extraction holes simulating film-cooling extraction. A passage with film-cooling extraction and a turning vane in the bend region. A passage with ribs 50% bigger than in the baseline configuration. This passage also had a turn region back wall angled at 30° to the incoming flow. The four configurations were tested at three Reynolds numbers (25,000, 50,000, 70,000 based on the hydraulic diameter). The configurations with extraction were tested at three extractions (30%, 40%, 50% of the inlet massflow). For the first time, the PIV and TLC techniques were employed simultaneously for a detailed investigation of the turbulent flow and heat transfer characteristics within internal coolant passages connected with 180° turns. The following conclusions can be drawn: 3D-streamlines were extracted from the flow measurements in the various cooling channels. The streamlines underlined the strong influence of both the ribs and the bend geometry on the creation of the secondary flow motion in the channels. The secondary flow motion dominates the heat transfer in the entire cooling channel. In the fully developed region, the rib-induced vortex governs the heat transfer distribution on the ribbed walls behind the ribs, and also on the sidewalls. In the bend region, the bend corner flow cells (with low streamwise velocity motion) deviate the bend incoming flow. They act as if the sharp bend geometry was modified. This geometry modification is very dependant on the studied configuration. The resulting heat transfer distribution is thus strongly configuration dependant. The regions of high heat transfer in the channels have been linked with high impinging flow regions. High gradients of mean impinging velocity components near the walls induce high heat transfer on the wall. In these regions, the Nusselt number showed a good correlation with the Reynolds normal stress corresponding to the impinging velocity. The configurations with extractions have the best thermal performances at all the tested Reynolds numbers. The variation of the extraction ratio does not modify substantially the thermal performances. CFD tools has benefited from the tremendous progress of computing power. 3D simulations of internal cooling configurations are now possible. CFD predictions have gained accuracy in such highly 3D flow problems. The predictions compared well with the measurements, with worst discrepancies of 25%.