Experimental determination of average turbulent heat transfer and friction factor in stator internal rib-roughened cooling channels.

Abstract

In gas turbine cooling design, techniques for heat extraction from the surfaces exposed to the hot stream are based on the increase of the inner heat transfer areas and on the promotion of the turbulence of the cooling flow. This is currently obtained by casting periodic ribs on one or more sides of the serpentine passages into the core of the blade. Fluid dynamic and thermal behaviour of the cooling flow have been extensively investigated by means of experimental facilities and many papers dealing with this subject have appeared in the latest years. The evaluation of the average value of the heat transfer coefficient most of the time is inferred from local measurements obtained by various experimental techniques. Moreover the great majority of these studies are not concerned with the overall average heat transfer coefficient for the combined ribs and region between them, but do focus just on one of them. This paper presents an attempt to collect information about the average Nusselt number inside a straight ribbed duct. Series of measurements have been performed in steady state eliminating the error sources inherently connected with transient methods. A low speed wind tunnel, operating in steady state flow, has been built to simulate the actual flow condition occurring in a rectilinear blade cooling channel. A straight square channel with 20 transverse ribs on two sides has been tested for Re of about 3 x 10(4), 4.5 x 10(4) and 6 x 10(4). The ribbed wall test section is electrically heated and the heat removed by a stationary flow of known thermal and fluid dynamic characteristics.