Capturing Sudden Increase in Heat Transfer on the Suction Side of a Turbine Blade Using a Navier–Stokes Solver

Abstract

The numerical modeling of heat transfer on the suction side of a cooled gas turbine blade is one of the more difficult problems in engineering. The main reason is believed to be the transition from laminar to turbulent flow and the inability of standard Navier–Stokes solvers to predict the transition. This paper proves that sudden changes in heat transfer on the suction side of a turbine blade can indeed also be caused by localized shocks disrupting the boundary layer. In contrast to transition, the position of these shocks and the effect of the shocks on the pressure distribution and heat transfer rate can be predicted to within an acceptable degree of accuracy using standard Navier–Stokes solvers. Two well-documented case studies from the literature are used to prove that the pressure distribution around the profile can be predicted accurately when compared to experimental data. At the same time this method can be used to capture sudden changes in heat transfer rate caused by localized shocks. The conclusion from this study is that localized shock waves close to the suction side surface of a turbine blade can have the same effect on the heat transfer rate to the blade as transition.

Conjugate Heat Transfer Advancements and Applications in Aerospace Engine Technology

“…In the realm of coupled field analysis, there exist two distinct methodological paradigms: the monolithic approach [10][11][12][13] and the partitioned approach [6,14,15]. The monolithic approach amalgamates the fluid and solid domains into a unified system of equations that are addressed concurrently, sharing a singular computational infrastructure.…”

A coupling numerical methodology for weakly transient conjugate heat transfer problems

“…In other words, the multi-physics interaction is accounted for in a single mathematical model. There are many monolithic solvers that treat coupled problems in this way in mechanical fluid-structure interactions [2,3] or in CHT [4,5]. The main advantage of the monolithic approach is that the mutual influence between the different domains is taken into account directly.…”

Development and assessment of a coupled strategy for conjugate heat transfer with Large Eddy Simulation: Application to a cooled turbine blade

“…There are two basic approaches to solve Conjugate Heat Transfer (CHT) problems. The first one is a direct coupling where the different fields are solved simultaneously in a large system of equations by a monolithic solver (Kao and Liou, 1997;Han et al, 2001;Rahman et al, 2005;Luo and Razinsky, 2007;Ganesan, 2007). The second approach consists in solving each set of field equations separately with dedicated solvers that exchange boundary conditions (Heselhaus and Vogel, 1995;Sondak and Dorney, 2000;Papanicolaou et al, 2001;Garg, 2002;Bohn et al, 2005).…”