Numerical Investigations of Cooling Enhancement With Internal Ribs and External Coolant Film

Abstract

Experimental and numerical investigations were carried out to study the average cooling performance of two different rectangular structures: 1) purely ribbed channel (only ribs were periodically embedded inner the wall of the structure); 2) combined structure of film cooling with the ribs (in the ribbed wall, film holes were periodically drilled). To create a similar environment of gas turbine blade, the experiments were performed at a high temperature mainstream, and the ambient temperature cooling air passed through the channel with the direction normal to the mainstream. In the experimental and numerical investigations, the overall cooling effect contributed by the heat conduction through channel’s wall and convections including internal ribbed wall and external film cooling was considered. In the numerical investigation, 3D conservation equations including mass, momentum, energy, turbulence eddy frequency and turbulence kinetic energy equations were solved with ANSYS-CFX, and the hybrid mesh technique and shear stress transport (SST) k-ω model were adopted. This numerical approach was validated by the experimental data. Using the validated numerical approach, the influence factors on the overall cooling effectiveness are discussed, and the effects of the internal ribs and external film cooling are numerically compared by the two structures. The relationship of the overall cooling effectiveness averaged over the rectangular surface with the mainstream Reynolds number, mass flow ratio and temperature ratio of the mainstream to cooling air, as well as the blowing ratio injected through the film holes was fitted by the numerical results.