Numerical Investigation of Heat Transfer in Aircraft Engine Blade Using k − ∈ and SST k − ω Model

Abstract

Even the smallest part engineered in gas turbines adds on hugely to its output performance. The blades form a major part which extracts energy from high temperature and high-pressure gases produced from the combustion chamber. This high temperature may cause the blades to undergo creep or fatigue failure eventually. The blade material would not withstand such high temperatures. With an intention to overcome this thermal barrier, various cooling technologies like jet impingement, film cooling, mist assisted film cooling, pin fin cooling, transpiration cooling have been adapted in the gas turbines. Using these cooling technologies, the temperature on the blades can be reduced by 200 to 300 K and higher performance may be achieved without much of a compromise. This study mainly focuses on how much the temperature can be reduced if only convective cavity cooling was used, wherein a hollow blade is used and cold fluid passes through it. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) in ANSYS was used to compute the temperature difference on the blade and high temperature region. The computations were carried out on both CFD and CFX. Two different turbulence models were considered, k-epsilon and k-omega SST (Shear Stress Transport). Analysis were carried out with nearly 3 million elements. Velocity, temperature flows at selected regions are reported.