Performance Simulations of a Gas Turbine Disk-Blade Assembly Employing Miniature Radially Rotating Heat Pipes

Abstract

With a substantially increased gas inlet temperature in modern gas turbines, the cooling of turbine disks is becoming a challenging task. In order to reduce the temperature at the disk rim, a new turbine disk incorporating radially rotating heat pipes has been proposed. The objective of this paper is to conduct a numerical investigation for the cooling effectiveness of the rotating heat pipe. One of the major tasks of this paper is to compare the performance between a proposed disk-blade assembly incorporating radially rotating heat pipes and a conventional disk-blade assembly without the heat pipes under the same heating and cooling conditions. The numerical investigation illustrates that the turbine disk cooling technique incorporating radially rotating heat pipes is feasible. The maximum temperature at the rim of the proposed disk can be reduced by more than 100 °C in comparison with that of a conventional disk without heat pipes. However, the average temperature at the blade airfoil surface can be reduced by only about 10 °C. In addition, both the heat pipe length and diameter have an important effect on the turbine disk cooling. Under the permission of material strength, a longer heat pipe or a larger heat pipe diameter will produce a lower temperature at the disk rim.