Determination of Non-Uniform Heat Transfer Coefficients Around a Solid Aluminum Alloy Complex Shape During Quenching by Using an Inverse Method

Abstract

Gas turbine systems include complex heat transfer problems. Especially, the cooling efficiency is critical to the operation of gas turbine. In order to achieve the desired cooling condition, one needs to know the distribution of heat transfer on the components; however, the cost to implement a full-scale gas turbine test is tremendous. Therefore, many researchers used simplified models to acquire the test data; certain experiments can provide heat flux measurement, whereas other techniques can measure heat transfer coefficients. The direct measurement of heat transfer coefficients on the surface of components is extremely difficult. In such situations, the inverse method using transient temperature measurements taken within the part can be used to determine heat transfer coefficients. By combining experiments and numerical modeling, this presentation attempts to provide an effective and robust method to determine heat transfer coefficients on the part’s surface during cooling. Though the setting of the present paper is the quenching of a part, the technique presented is proposed for in-service heat load. To characterize the present situation, i.e., non-uniform heat transfer coefficients occurring during quenching, a unique methodology for employing inverse heat conduction was developed to obtain heat transfer coefficients from temperature responses. In conventional inverse approaches, the heat transfer coefficient is assumed to be uniform around the periphery, but this approach sometimes is unrealistic, especially for complex shaped parts. In this study, experimental data were used to find parameters in a heat transfer correlation, rather than to determine the coefficients directly. The resulting analysis provided an improved fit to measurements compared to conventional inverse approaches. The method developed was robust and is extendable to parts of arbitrary shape.