Investigations of Heat Transfer and Film Cooling Effect on a Worn Squealer Tip

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Abstract Wear damage commonly occurs in modern gas turbine rotor blade tip due to relative movements and expansions between rotating and stationary parts. Tip wear has a significant impact on the aerodynamic, heat transfer and cooling performance of rotor blades, thus threatening the economy and safety of whole gas turbine system. Based on a simple linear wear model, this paper numerically investigates the aerodynamic, heat transfer and film cooling performance of a worn squealer tip with three starting-locations of wear (sl = 25%Cax, 50%Cax and 75%Cax) and five wear-depths (wd = 0.82%, 1.64%, 2.46%, 3.28% and 4.10%). Firstly, based on the existing experimental data, numerical methods and grid independence are examined carefully. Then, three dimensional flow fields, total pressure loss distributions, heat transfer coefficients and film cooling effectiveness in worn squealer tip region are computed, which are compared with the original design case. The results show that, with the increase of wear depth and the movement of wear starting-location to the leading edge, the scale and intensity of cavity vortex are increased, which results in the extended high heat transfer area on cavity floor near the leading edge. Wear makes more coolant flow out of the cavity, and reduces the area-averaged film cooling effectiveness at the bottom of cavity, but increases the film cooling effectiveness on pressure-side rim. The increase of wear depth makes more flow leak through the tip gap, thus increasing the scale and intensity of leakage vortex and further increasing the total pressure loss in the tip gap. Compared with the original design case, as the wear depth is increased from 0.82% to 4.10%, the mass-averaged total pressure loss in cascade is increased by 0.3–6.7%, the area-averaged heat transfer coefficient on cavity floor is increased by 1.7–29.1% while on squealer rim it is decreased by 3.1–26.3%, and the area-averaged film cooling effectiveness on cavity floor is decreased by 0.035 at most while on squealer rim it is increased by 0.064 at most.