Heat Transfer for the Film-Cooled Vane of a 1-1/2 Stage High-Pressure Transonic Turbine—Part I: Experimental Configuration and Data Review With Inlet Temperature Profile Effects

2012 ◽  
Vol 135 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Harika S. Kahveci ◽  
Charles W. Haldeman ◽  
Randall M. Mathison ◽  
Michael G. Dunn

This paper investigates the vane airfoil and inner endwall heat transfer for a full-scale turbine stage operating at design corrected conditions under the influence of different vane inlet temperature profiles and vane cooling flow rates. The turbine stage is a modern 3D design consisting of a cooled high-pressure vane, an un-cooled high-pressure rotor, and a low-pressure vane. Inlet temperature profiles (uniform, radial, and hot streaks) are created by a passive heat exchanger and can be made circumferentially uniform to within ±5% of the bulk average inlet temperature when desired. The high-pressure vane has full cooling coverage on both the airfoil surface and the inner and outer endwalls. Two circuits supply coolant to the vane, and a third circuit supplies coolant to the rotor purge cavity. All of the cooling circuits are independently controlled. Measurements are performed using double-sided heat-flux gauges located at four spans of the vane airfoil surface and throughout the inner endwall region. Analysis of the heat transfer measured for the uncooled downstream blade row has been reported previously. Part I of this paper describes the operating conditions and data reduction techniques utilized in this analysis, including a novel application of a traditional statistical method to assign confidence limits to measurements in the absence of repeat runs. The impact of Stanton number definition is discussed while analyzing inlet temperature profile shape effects. Comparison of the present data (Build 2) to the data obtained for an uncooled vane (Build 1) clearly illustrates the impact of the cooling flow and its relative effects on both the endwall and airfoils. Measurements obtained for the cooled hardware without cooling applied agree well with the solid airfoil for the airfoil pressure surface but not for the suction surface. Differences on the suction surface are due to flow being ingested on the pressure surface and reinjected on the suction surface when coolant is not supplied for Build 2. Part II of the paper continues this discussion by describing the influence of overall cooling level variation and the influence of the vane trailing edge cooling on the vane heat transfer measurements.

Author(s):  
Harika S. Kahveci ◽  
Charles W. Haldeman ◽  
Randall M. Mathison ◽  
Michael G. Dunn

This paper investigates the vane airfoil and inner endwall heat transfer for a full-scale turbine stage operating at design corrected conditions under the influence of different vane inlet temperature profiles and vane cooling flow rates. The turbine stage is a modern 3-D design consisting of a cooled high-pressure vane, an un-cooled high-pressure rotor, and a low-pressure vane. Inlet temperature profiles (uniform, radial and hot streaks) are created by a passive heat exchanger and can be made circumferentially uniform to within ±5% of the bulk average inlet temperature when desired. The high-pressure vane has full cooling coverage on both the airfoil surface and the inner and outer endwalls. Two circuits supply coolant to the vane, and a third circuit supplies coolant to the rotor purge cavity. All of the cooling circuits are independently controlled. Measurements are performed using double-sided heat-flux gauges located at four spans of the vane airfoil surface and throughout the inner endwall region. Analysis of the heat transfer measured for the uncooled downstream blade row has been reported previously. Part I of this paper describes the operating conditions and data reduction techniques utilized in this analysis, including a novel application of a traditional statistical method to assign confidence limits to measurements in the absence of repeat runs. The impact of Stanton Number definition is discussed while analyzing inlet temperature profile shape effects. Comparison of the present data (Build 2) to the data obtained for an un-cooled vane (Build 1) clearly illustrates the impact of the cooling flow and its relative effects on both the endwall and airfoils. Measurements obtained for the cooled hardware without cooling applied agree well with the solid air-foil for the airfoil pressure surface but not for the suction surface. Differences on the suction surface are due to flow being ingested on the pressure surface and re-injected on the suction surface when coolant is not supplied for Build 2. Part II of the paper continues this discussion by describing the influence of overall cooling level variation and the influence of the vane trailing edge cooling on the vane heat transfer measurements.


2011 ◽  
Vol 134 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
R. M. Mathison ◽  
C. W. Haldeman ◽  
M. G. Dunn

Heat-flux measurements are presented for a one-and-one-half stage high-pressure turbine operating at design-corrected conditions with modulated cooling flows in the presence of different inlet temperature profiles. Coolant is supplied from a heavily film-cooled vane and the purge cavity (between the rotor disk and the upstream vane) but not from the rotor blades, which are solid metal. Thin-film heat-flux gauges are located on the uncooled blade pressure and suction surface (at multiple span locations), on the blade tip, on the blade platform, and on the disk and vane sides of the purge cavity. These measurements provide a comprehensive picture of the effect of varying cooling flow rates on surface heat transfer to the turbine blade for uniform and radial inlet temperature profiles. Part I of this paper examines the macroscopic influence of varying all cooling flows together, while Part II investigates the individual regions of influence of the vane outer and purge cooling circuits in more detail. The heat-flux gauges are able to track the cooling flow over the suction surface of the airfoil as it wraps upwards along the base of the airfoil for the uniform vane inlet temperature profile. A similar comparison for the radial profile shows the same coolant behavior but with less pronounced changes. From these comparisons, it is clear that cooling impacts each temperature profile similarly. Nearly all of the cooling influence is limited to the blade suction surface, but small changes are observed for the pressure surface. In addition to the cooling study, a novel method of calculating the adiabatic wall temperature is demonstrated. The derived adiabatic wall temperature distribution shows very similar trends to the Stanton number distribution on the blade.


Author(s):  
R. M. Mathison ◽  
C. W. Haldeman ◽  
M. G. Dunn

Heat-flux measurements are presented for a one-and-one-half stage high-pressure turbine operating at design corrected conditions with modulated cooling flows in the presence of different inlet temperature profiles. Coolant is supplied from a heavily film cooled vane and the purge cavity (between the rotor disk and the upstream vane) but not from the rotor blades, which are solid metal. Thin-film heat-flux gauges are located on the un-cooled blade pressure and suction surface (at multiple span locations), on the blade tip, on the blade platform, and on the disk and vane sides of the purge cavity. These measurements provide a comprehensive picture of the effect of varying cooling flow rates on surface heat transfer to the turbine blade for uniform and radial inlet temperature profiles. Part I of this paper examines the macroscopic influence of varying all cooling flows together, while Part II investigates the individual regions of influence of the vane outer and purge cooling circuits in more detail. The heat-flux gauges are able to track the cooling flow over the suction surface of the airfoil as it wraps upwards along the base of the airfoil for the uniform vane inlet temperature profile. A similar comparison for the radial profile shows the same coolant behavior but with less pronounced changes. From these comparisons, it is clear that cooling impacts each temperature profile similarly. Nearly all of the cooling influence is limited to the blade suction surface, but small changes are observed for the pressure surface. In addition to the cooling study, a novel method of calculating the adiabatic wall temperature is demonstrated. The derived adiabatic wall temperature distribution shows very similar trends to the Stanton Number distribution on the blade.


Author(s):  
Harika S. Kahveci ◽  
Charles W. Haldeman ◽  
Randall M. Mathison ◽  
Michael G. Dunn

The impact of film cooling on heat transfer is investigated for the high-pressure vane of a one-and-one-half stage high-pressure turbine operating at design corrected conditions. Cooling is supplied through three independently controllable circuits to holes in the inner and outer endwall, vane leading edge showerhead, and the pressure and suction surfaces of the airfoil in addition to vane trailing edge slots. Four different overall cooling flow rates are investigated and one cooling circuit is varied independently. All results reported in this part of the paper are for a radial inlet temperature profile, one of the four profiles reported in Part I of this paper. Part I describes the experimental setup, data quality, influence of inlet temperature profile, and influence of cooling when compared to a solid vane. This part of the paper shows that the addition of coolant reduces airfoil Stanton Number by up to 60%. The largest reductions due to cooling are observed close to the inner endwall because the coolant to the majority of the vane is supplied by a plenum at the inside diameter. While the introduction of cooling has a significant impact on Stanton Number, the impact of changing coolant flow rates is only observed for gauges near 5% span and on the inner endwall. This indicates that very little of the increased coolant mass flow reaches all the way to 90% span and the majority of the additional mass flow is injected into the core flow near the plenum. Turning off the vane outer cooling circuit that supplies coolant to the outer endwall holes, vane trailing edge slots, and three rows of holes on the pressure surface of the airfoil, has a local impact on Stanton Number. Changes downstream of the holes on the airfoil pressure surface indicate that internal heat transfer from the coolant flowing inside the vane is important to the external heat transfer, suggesting that a conjugate heat-transfer solution may be required to achieve good external heat-transfer predictions in this area. Measurements on the inner endwall show that temperature reduction in the vane wake due to the trailing edge cooling is important to many points downstream of the vane.


2011 ◽  
Vol 134 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
C. W. Haldeman ◽  
M. G. Dunn ◽  
R. M. Mathison

A fully cooled turbine stage is utilized to investigate the combined effects of turbine stage cooling variation and high-pressure turbine (HPT) vane inlet temperature profile on the aerodynamics and heat transfer of the turbine stage operating at the proper design corrected conditions. Part I of this paper describes the overall experimental matrix, the influence of the cooling mass flows, and temperature profiles from an aerodynamic perspective. The measurements include internal and external pressures for the blade airfoil. Part II of this paper focuses on the influence of these parameters on the heat transfer to the blade airfoil and the stationary blade shroud. The major results show that cooling levels do not significantly affect the external pressure distributions over the majority of the blade and vane. However, aerodynamic effects of cooling levels and temperature profiles are seen for the vane and blade pressure loading on the suction surfaces. The magnitude of these effects ranges from 5% to 10% of the local measurement for the reference case, which is the uniform inlet profile with nominal cooling for this study. Inlet temperature profiles and cooling levels have comparable impacts on pressure loading, but their relative influence changes with location, and Reynolds number and corrected speed variations have the lowest impact on pressure loading changes, with changes below 5% of the local measurements. Another important result is that unlike uncooled experiments, the proper normalizing variable for pressures aft of the vane is not the inlet pressure but a “rotor reference pressure,” which adjusts the total inlet pressure by the increase in pressure resulting from the additional cooling mass flows. For the rotor, this consists primarily of the vane trailing edge cooling flows. This simplified model accounts for the effects of the vane cooling, and isolates the changes due to blade cooling. The spread of the cooling flows through the stage is important to the surface heat-flux, and has an impact on pressure loadings on the suction surface. The data establishes important guidelines for modelers of cooling flows. The changes observed on the suction side of the airfoils are real, but quite small from an engineering design perspective. Thus the pressure levels are stable and relatively independent of cooling levels, which is critical for good heat-transfer predictions.


Author(s):  
Robin Prenter ◽  
Ali Ameri ◽  
Jeffrey P. Bons

Ash particle deposition in a high-pressure turbine stage was numerically investigated using steady (RANS) and unsteady (URANS) methods. An inlet temperature profile consisting of Gaussian non-uniformities (hot streaks) was imposed on the vanes, with vane cooling simulated using a constant vane wall temperature. The steady case utilized a mixing plane at the vane-rotor interface, while a sliding mesh was used for the unsteady case. Corrected speed and mass flow were matched to an experiment involving the same geometry, so that the flow solution could be validated against measurements. Particles ranging from 1 to 65 μm were introduced into the vane domain, and tracked using an Eulerian-Lagrangian tracking model. A novel particle rebound and deposition model was employed to determine particles’ stick/bounce behavior upon impact with a surface. Predicted impact and capture distributions for different diameters were compared between the steady and unsteady methods, highlighting effects from the circumferential averaging of the mixing plane. The mixing plane simulation was found to over predict impact and capture efficiencies compared with the unsteady calculation, as well as over predict particle temperature upon impact with the blade surface. Blade impact efficiencies increased with higher Stokes numbers in both simulations, with multiple rebounds occurring on the pressure surface in the mixing plane case, and on the suction surface in the unsteady case.


Author(s):  
Jeremy Nickol ◽  
Matthew Tomko ◽  
Randall Mathison ◽  
Jong S. Liu ◽  
Mark Morris ◽  
...  

An experiment is performed using a cooled transonic high-pressure turbine stage operating at design-corrected conditions. Pressure measurements are taken at several locations within the forward purge cavity between the high-pressure stator and rotor, as well as on the blade platforms and vane inner endwalls. Double-sided Kapton heat-flux gauges are installed on the upper surface of the rotor blade platform (open to the hot gas path flow) and underneath the platform (exposed to coolant and leakage flow). The blade airfoil and purge flow cooling are supplied by the same flow circuit and must be varied together, but the influence of the airfoil cooling has previously been shown to be negligible in the platform region flow of interest to this study. A separate cooling circuit supplies the aft purge flow between the rotor and downstream components. The vane cooling holes have been blocked off for this experiment to simplify analysis. In order to determine the effect of the purge flow on the blade aerodynamics and heat transfer, the forward and aft cooling flow rates are varied independently. Both time-averaged and time-accurate results are presented for the pressure and heat-flux data to illustrate the complex interactions between the purge cavity flow structures and the external flow. Time-accurate data are presented using both Fast-Fourier Transforms (FFTs) to identify driving frequencies and ensemble average plots to highlight the impact of different wake shapes.


Author(s):  
A. Rahim ◽  
L. He ◽  
E. Romero

One of the key considerations in high pressure (HP) turbine design is the heat load experienced by rotor blades. The impact of turbine inlet non-uniformities on the blades in the form of combined temperature and velocity traverses, typical for a lean burn combustor exit, has rarely been studied. For general HP turbine aerothermal designs, it is also of interest to understand how the behavior of a lean burn combustor traverses (hot streak and swirl) might contrast with those for rich burn combustion (largely hot streak only). In the present work, a computational study has been carried out on the aerothermal performance of a HP turbine stage under non-uniform temperature and velocity inlet profiles. The analyses are primarily conducted for two combined hot streak and swirl inlets, with opposite swirl directions. In addition, comparisons are made against a hot streak only case and a uniform inlet. The effects of three NGV shape configurations are investigated; namely, straight, compound lean (CL) and reverse compound lean (RCL). The present results show that there is a qualitative change in the roles played by heat transfer coefficient (HTC) and fluid driving (‘adiabatic wall’) temperature, Taw. It has been shown that the blade heat load distribution for a uniform inlet is dominated by HTC, whilst for a hot streak only case it is wholly influenced by Taw. However, in contrast to the hot streak only case, the case with a combined hot streak and swirl shows a role reversal with the HTC being dominant in determining the heat load. Additionally, it is seen that the swirling flow radially redistributes the hot fluid within the NGV passage considerably, leading to a much ‘flatter’ rotor inlet temperature profile compared to its hot streak only counterpart. Further, the rotor heat transfer characteristics for the cases with the combined traverses are shown to be strongly dependent on the NGV shaping and the inlet swirl direction, indicating the potential for future design space exploration. The present findings underline the need to clearly define relevant combustor exit temperature and velocity profiles when designing and optimizing NGVs for HP turbine aerothermal performance.


2012 ◽  
Vol 135 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Harika S. Kahveci ◽  
Charles W. Haldeman ◽  
Randall M. Mathison ◽  
Michael G. Dunn

The impact of film cooling on heat transfer is investigated for the high-pressure vane of a 1-1/2 stage high-pressure turbine operating at design corrected conditions. Cooling is supplied through three independently controllable circuits to holes in the inner and outer end wall, vane leading edge showerhead, and the pressure and suction surfaces of the airfoil, in addition to vane trailing edge slots. Four different overall cooling flow rates are investigated and one cooling circuit is varied independently. All results reported in this part of the paper are for a radial inlet temperature profile, one of the four profiles reported in part I of this paper. Part I describes the experimental setup, data quality, influence of inlet temperature profile, and influence of cooling when compared to a solid vane. This part of the paper shows that the addition of coolant reduces airfoil Stanton number by up to 60%. The largest reductions due to cooling are observed close to the inner end wall because the coolant to the majority of the vane is supplied by a plenum at the inside diameter. While the introduction of cooling has a significant impact on Stanton number, the impact of changing coolant flow rates is only observed for gauges near 5% span and on the inner end wall. This indicates that very little of the increased coolant mass flow reaches all the way to 90% span and the majority of the additional mass flow is injected into the core flow near the plenum. Turning off the vane outer cooling circuit that supplies coolant to the outer end wall holes, vane trailing edge slots, and three rows of holes on the pressure surface of the airfoil, has a local impact on Stanton number. Changes downstream of the holes on the airfoil pressure surface indicate that internal heat transfer from the coolant flowing inside the vane is important to the external heat transfer, suggesting that a conjugate heat-transfer solution may be required to achieve good external heat-transfer predictions in this area. Measurements on the inner end wall show that temperature reduction in the vane wake due to the trailing edge cooling is important to many points downstream of the vane.


Author(s):  
C. W. Haldeman ◽  
M. G. Dunn ◽  
R. M. Mathison

A fully cooled turbine stage is utilized to investigate the combined effects of turbine stage cooling variation and HPT vane inlet temperature profile on the aerodynamics and heat transfer of the turbine stage operating at the proper design corrected conditions. Part I of this paper describes the overall experimental matrix, the influence of the cooling mass flows, and temperature profiles from an aerodynamic perspective. The measurements include internal and external pressures for the blade airfoil. Part II of this paper focuses on the influence of these parameters on the heat transfer to the blade airfoil and the stationary blade shroud. The major results show that cooling levels do not significantly affect the external pressure distributions over the majority of the blade and vane. However, aerodynamic effects of cooling levels and temperature profiles are seen for the vane and blade pressure loading on the suction surfaces. The magnitude of these effects range from 5 to 10% of the local measurement for the reference case, which is the uniform inlet profile with nominal cooling for this study. Inlet temperature profiles and cooling levels have comparable impacts on pressure loading, but their relative influence changes with location, Reynolds number and corrected speed variations have the lowest impact on pressure loading changes, with changes below 5% of the local measurements. Another important result is that unlike un-cooled experiments, the proper normalizing variable for pressures aft of the vane is not the inlet pressure but a “Rotor Reference Pressure”, which adjusts the total inlet pressure by the increase in pressure resulting from the additional cooling mass flows. For the rotor, this consists primarily of the vane trailing edge cooling flows. This simplified model accounts for the effects of the vane cooling, and isolates the changes due to blade cooling. The spread of the cooling flows through the stage is important to the surface heat flux, and has an impact on pressure loadings on the suction surface. The data establishes important guidelines for modelers of cooling flows. The changes observed on the suction side of the airfoils are real, but quite small from an engineering design perspective. Thus the pressure levels are stable and relatively independent of cooling levels, which is critical for good heat-transfer predictions.


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