Heat Transfer Characteristics of Blade Internal Tip Surface by Arrays of Delta-Winglet Vortex Generator Pairs

Abstract

Abstract This paper numerically investigated the effect of the arrays of the delta-winglet vortex generators (DWVGs) pairs on the flow field and heat transfer characteristics of gas turbine blade tip internal surface. Six different arrangements including three inclinations (30°, 45°, 60°) and two aspect ratios of DWVGs are calculated at Reynolds numbers ranging from 6000 to 14,000. The internal cooling passage of gas turbines are simplified as two-pass U bend channel and the U bend channel without any tabulators are considered as Baseline. The detailed flow structure, the evolution of vortices and heat transfer performance over the tip internal surface are presented. The results show that the arrays of DWVGs placed on the tip internal surface have great influence on the tip flow and heat transfer. Small-scale vortices are induced by the DWVGs, which have negligible impact on the main flow. Due to the nature of 180-deg turn, the impingement-like flow contributes the highest heat transfer performance. But too many DWVGs placed on the attachment region will weaken the energy of main flow and therefore reduce the local heat transfer. Besides, the blocked DWVGs (BVG) will enhance the heat transfer at the center line, and the guided DWVGs (GVG) will extend the low-energy flow cluster and thus weakening the heat transfer intensity. The results of this study are useful for understanding the mechanism of heat transfer characteristics in a realistic gas turbine blade by using the arrays of DWVGs.