Heat Transfer Enhancement by Criss-Cross Pattern Formed by 45° Angled Rib Turbulators in a Straight Square Duct

Abstract

The need for higher turbine efficiency has been constantly pushing the turbine inlet temperatures to elevated levels. Hot gas path temperatures are much higher than the typical blade material yield temperature. Efficient internal cooling technologies are required for safe operation of gas turbine. Several internal cooling technologies have been developed in order to enhance the heat transfer from relatively hotter walls of turbine blade. For mid-chord region of turbine blade, rib turbulators are typically installed in multi-pass channels. Rib turbulators trip the boundary layer, induce secondary flows which enhance near wall shear as well as enhance turbulent mixing when they interact with surrounding walls. Research has been carried out on several aspects of rib turbulated passages in order to achieve higher thermal hydraulic performance. Generally, rib turbulators are installed on two opposite walls of serpentine passages in order to enhance heat transfer from both pressure and suction sides of blade through coolant flowing through complicated paths. Typical arrangement of rib turbulators were parallel to each other or having some offset from each other. In the present study, an attempt has been made to arrange 45° angled ribs in a way that they form a Criss-Cross pattern. Two ribbed configurations with Criss-Cross pattern - Inline and staggered, have been studied where the baseline case was smooth duct with no rib turbulators. The effective rib-pitch-to-rib-height ratio (p/e) was 8.6 and rib-height-to-channel-hydraulic diameter ratio (e/dh) was 0.1. The channel had a total length of 20 hydraulic diameters and the rib turbulators were installed at a distance of six hydraulic diameters from the inlet of the test section to allow flow development. Detailed heat transfer coefficients were measured using transient liquid crystal thermography employing 1D semi-infinite conduction model. Globally averaged Nusselt numbers are calculated from the detailed measurements and thermal hydraulic performance of configurations have been reported with respect to Reynolds number. The aim of this study was to develop a cooling configuration which has higher thermal-hydraulic performance compared to other traditional rib configurations. It has been found that the heat transfer characteristics of the inline and staggered configurations were similar to each other and ranged between three times D-B correlation to 2.7 times, for Reynolds number ranging from 30000 to 60000. Inline configuration had relatively lower frictional losses, however the thermal hydraulic performances of both the configurations were similar.