Aerothermodynamic features of a Coriolis-applied smooth U channel for gas turbine blade

Abstract

Rising temperature of gas turbine inlet brings great challenge for blade temperature tolerance, thus high effective cooling structure for turbine blade is vital. In this paper, aerothermodynamic features including heat transfer and pressure drop of a Coriolis-applied rotating smooth U channel are studied in detail. Both experiment and numerical methods are utilized in the study. A rotating cooling structure experiment rig system has been established and validated. The experiments were conducted in the rotating cooling structure experiment rig. Besides, RANS was chosen in the simulation. In the experiment and numerical studies, Reynolds number is constant at 16000 and Rotation number ranges from 0 to 0.024. The results indicate that Coriolis force plays a dominant and positive role on heat transfer ability on trailing wall, and that bend outlet impingement effect is the primary factor compared to Coriolis force for the Nusselt number of smooth leading surface. Besides, Coriolis force at bend region probably suppresses the formation of K–H vortices, thus boosts the flow stability, reduce pressure loss of channel and weakens second heat transfer peak of impingement at the bend outlet. What's more, the total performance of the Coriolis-applied smooth U channel at Ro of 0.006 and 0.024 are 2.18 % and 8.51 % higher than the channel at Ro of 0, which means that rotation is good for the Coriolis-applied smooth U channel and that the channel has superior performance and is encouraging in future rotating blade cooling application.