Numerical study of cooling performance and flow characteristics of film hole-broken rib composite structure with squealer tip

Abstract

The gas turbine blade tip might face substantial heat loads because of leakage flow between the blades and the casing. For blade tip cooling, a composite cooling structure with film holes and broken ribs is first used on GE-E3 blade in this work. The flow and cooling characteristics of the innovative structure are studied by numerical simulation under various blowing ratio (BR) conditions. Meanwhile, the impact of modifying both the rib angle and the rib height on the adiabatic film cooling effectiveness (AFCE) at the tip of the squealer is analyzed. According to the results, adding rib structures to the squealer tip can effectively regulate the paths of cavity vortices and kidney-shaped vortex pairs (KVP) at the tip. As a result, the averaged AFCE at the blade tip is improved. The notch pressure-side broken rib structure has good aerothermal performance, and the highest AFCE at BRs of 0.50, 1.00, and 1.50 basically occur under the “R60-100 %” condition (R60 refers to the rib structure of 60°, and 100 % is the ratio of rib height to notch depth), and the corresponding AFCE are 27.71 %, 26.00 %, and 32.47 % higher than those of the no-rib case, respectively. The corresponding AFCE increased by 27.71 %, 26.52 %, and 32.47 %, respectively, compared to the no-rib condition. The highest AFCE at a BR of 1.50 occurs at “R75-70 %“, which is a 38.20 % increase in AFCE compared to the no rib case. The improvement in AFCE is due to the difference in the flow of the cooling jets, which are subject to cavity vortices at different BRs. The analysis shows that the addition of ribs disrupts the formation of KVPs and weakens the influence of the cavity vortex, thus reducing the low AFCE region at the lower end of the tip groove and increasing the AFCE. However, due to the blocking effect of the ribs, the pressure loss at the blade tip is elevated. The proposed blade tip cooling structure is expected to provide new ideas for the next generation of advanced gas turbine cooling designs.