International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering

Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 4, Issue 4, April 2014)

Simulations of Flow and Heat Transfer in Turbine Blade

Cooling Ducts
Dushyant Kalihari1, Pawit kumar jaiswal2, Brijesh Patel3
1,2

M.Tech Student, Assistant Professor, School of Engineering & IT, MATS University, Raipur (C.G.)
In addition to this, the effects of rotational Coriolis
forces and centrifugal buoyancy effects make the accurate
prediction of heat transfer coefficients quite challenging.
Computational expense has limited most applications of
CFD to solving the Reynolds averaged NavierStokes
(RANS) equations and using turbulence models for closure
in the equations, but more recently the ability to resolve all
but the smallest turbulence scales using large eddy
simulations (LES) has become more available

AbstractThe aim of this paper is re-examine for various

researches on analysis of the turbine blade cooling using
Experimental and Computation i.e. Computational Fluid
Dynamics (CFD). During experiment wide range of flow
model are used in order to check the performance of the
model in terms of fluid flow and heat transfer and the place
where lack of experimental setup is there Computational
models where used and the experimental result are well
compared and validated and new techniques are developed.
Since Gas turbine blade is subjected to high temperature
pressure till from inlet to its outlet and also subjected to
various aerodynamic and thermal loads; presently vast
research has strenuous on improving the heat transfer of
turbine blade ducts and it cooling in order to prevent it from
catastrophic failure. Many efforts are making in this field in
improving performance of turbine. These efforts are much
time consuming and need expensive laboratory.

II. LITERATURE REVIEW

Kadja and Bergeles 1997 present a two-dimensional
numerical model for the injection of a fluid through a slot
into a free stream. The model is based on a finite-volume
integration of the equations governing mass, momentum
and heat transport. The solution accuracy was improved by
using local grid refinement The model developed was
validated doubly by comparison with available
experimental data and the results of an analytical method
proposed for two-dimensional injection of an irrotational
inviscid fluid.
Noot And Mattheij 2000 investigate how these ribs
influence the heat transfer of the cooling air on the blades.
A model is given to study this problem such that it lends
itself to a numerical approach. A detailed discussion is
given of the problem involved. It is shown how the ideas
are implemented in a numerical code. The results of the
simulations are asseesed showing a practical way to test the
quality of these cooling ducts.
In 2002 Ooi and Iaccarino use modern eddy viscosity
turbulence model for predicting turbulent flows and heat
transfer in complex passages with the help of FLUENT
solver since the used model is a part or implemented in
turbine blade cooling system. In their work numerical data
from the calculation of the turbulent flow field and heat
transfer in two-dimensional (2D) cavities and threedimensional (3D) ribbed ducts. The result obtained from
v2f turbulence model is well validated with experimental
work and shows good agreement.

Keywords- CFD, Ducts, Heat transfer,

I. INTRODUCTION
Gas turbines play an important role in aviation and
industrial applications. There is a growing tendency to use
higher temperatures at the inlet of the turbine to improve
the efficiency of the gas turbine engine. Consequently, the
heat load on the turbine components increases, especially in
the high pressure turbine section. This heat load is caused
by the exposure to an enormous heat flux of the burnt gas
from the combustion chamber. As a result, the lifetime
expectancy of a blade can be reduced significantly. In order
to comply with modern safety standards, the blades in gas
turbines need to be cooled.
In an effort to build more powerful and efficient engines,
the gas turbine industry has worked to enhance cooling
methods to accommodate higher turbine inlet temperatures.
Ribbed internal cooling ducts in various configurations are
commonly used in modern high temperature gas turbine
vanes and blades to enhance the heat transfer coefficient.
The flows generated by ribs are dominated by separating
and reattaching shear layers with vortex shedding and
secondary flows in the cross-section.

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International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering

Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 4, Issue 4, April 2014)
III. SIMULATIONS OF FLOW AND HEAT TRANSFER IN A
STATIONARY RIBBED DUCT
At the duct inlet, both the computations and
experiments show that the peak turbulence intensities
reach values as high as 40% in the streamwise and
spanwise directions and 32% in the vertical direction.
LES produces the correct physics both qualitatively
and quantitatively to within 1015% of experiments.
comparison of values along the centerline of the
developing flow region shows that the mean flow and
turbulent quantities do not become fully developed
until they reach beyond the seventh rib of the duct.
Turbulence intensities in the 1800 bend are found to
reach values as high as 50%, and local heat transfer
comparisons show that the heat transfer augmentation
shifts towards the outside wall downstream of the
bend with little or no shift upstream.
Figure 1 : Comparing the heat transfer predictions using various
turbulence models with experimental data for p/e= 9 and 1s
configuration. [3]

Albeirutty and Alghamdi 2004 compare Heat transfer

analysis for a multistage gas turbine using different bladecooling schemes. The three main schemes of the blade
cooling, namely air-cooling, open-circuit steam cooling
(OCSC) and closed-loop steam cooling (CLSC). The heat
transfer model permitted the calculations of the cooling
mass ratio that is required to reach a certain blade
temperature. The results showed that steam appears to be a
potential cooling medium, when employed in an opencircuit or in a closed-loop scheme. The combined system
with CLSC gives better overall performance than does aircooling or the OCSC.
Zuckerman and Lior 2005 describe Uses of impinging
jet devices for heat transfer in cooling applications within
turbine systems. Numerical simulation techniques and
results are described, and the relative strengths and
drawbacks of the k-, k-v, Reynolds stress model, algebraic
stress models, shear stress transport, and v2-f turbulence
models for impinging jet flow and heat transfer are
compared. Select model equations are provided as well as
quantitative assessments of model errors and judgments of
model suitability.

Figure 2 : Modeled duct and Flow isotherms of modeled duct. [6]

IV. TRANSFER IN ROTATING RECTANGULAR DUCTS WITH

SKEWED RIBS
These channel geometries are in common use as the
internal cooling passages of a gas turbine rotor blade and
the tested Ro and Bu ranges are considerably extended
from the previous experiences. A set of heat transfer
correlations is derived to represent all the heat transfer data
in the periodically developed flow regions of three rotating
ducts.

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International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering

Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 4, Issue 4, April 2014)
V. LIQUID CRYSTAL TECHNIQUE FOR INTERNAL COOLING
It is found that the distribution of heat transfer
coefficient was asymmetric due to the secondary flow
induced by the angled ribs. Also, dimples fabricated
between the ribs increased the heat coefficient with an
acceptable increase in pressure drop. Since the proposed
compound cooling technique showed better thermal
performance than rib only or dimpled only cooling
technique

Promvonge and Changcharoen 2011conduct an

numerical work to examine turbulent periodic flow and
heat transfer characteristics in a three dimensional squareduct with inline 60 V-shaped discrete thin ribs placed on
two opposite heated walls. The computations are based on
the finite volume method with the SIMPLE algorithm for
handling PV is used. And conclude that the ribbed duct
flow is fully developed periodic flow and heat transfer
profiles at about x/D=711 downstream of the inlet. Effects
of different rib height to duct diameter ratios, BR, on
thermal characteristics for a periodic ribbed duct flow are
investigated.
Xie and Zhang 2012 investigate turbulent fluid flow and
heat transfer through seven two pass channels with and
without guide ribs or vanes have been investigated
numerically using Computational Fluid Dynamics
technique. The influences of placing six kinds of guide
ribs/vanes in the turn regions on the tip-wall heat transfer
enhancement and the overall pressure loss of the channels
are analyzed. The guide ribs have a height of 9% height of
the channel while the guide vanes have a height identical to
that of the channel. The inlet Reynolds numbers are
ranging from 100,000 to 600,000.and Conclude that the tip
heat transfer coefficients of the channels with guide
ribs/vanes are up to 65% higher than those of a channel
without guide ribs/vanes, while the pressure loss might be
reduced if the guide ribs/vanes are properly designed and
located, otherwise the pressure loss is expected to be
increased severely.

Figure 4 : Detailed view of test section. [10]

VI. EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION ON SAND TRANSPORT

AND DEPOSITION IN THE INTERNAL COOLING PASSAGES OF
TURBINE BLADES.
An experiment is perform in order to investigate the
sand transport and deposition in the internal cooling
passages of turbine blades. They use Large Eddy
Simulation (LES) with a wall-model used in a discrete
Lagrangian framework. They conclude that
The average particle impingement per pitch is 28%
higher in the second pass than the first pass.
Lower particle tendency to impact the region
immediately behind the rib in the first pass compared
to the second pass where particle impingement is
more uniform in the region between two ribs.

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International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering

Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 4, Issue 4, April 2014)
Results identify the damage prone areas in the internal
cooling passages of a turbine blade under the
influence of sand ingestion.

REFERENCES
Mahfoud Kadja* and George Bergelest, Computational Study Of
Turbine Blade Cooling By Slot-Injection Of A Gas, Applied
Thermal Engineering Vol. 17, No. 12. pp. 1141-I 149. 1997
[2] M. J. Noot And R. M. M. Mattheij, Numerical Analysis of Turbine
Blade Cooling Ducts, Mathematical and Computer Modelling 31
(2000) 77-98
[3] A. Ooi , G. Iaccarino, P.A. Durbin, M. Behnia ,Reynolds averaged
simulation of flow and heat transfer in ribbed ducts, International
Journal of Heat and Fluid Flow 23 (2002) 7507
[4] Mohammad H. Albeirutty, Abdullah S. Alghamdi, Yousef S. Najjar,
Heat transfer analysis for a ultistage gas turbine using different
blade-cooling schemes, Applied Thermal Engineering 24 (2004)
563577
[5] Neil Zuckerman, Noam Lior, Impingement Heat Transfer:
Correlations and Numerical Modeling, Journal Of Heat Transfer,
May 2005, Vol. 127 /545
[6] Evan A. Sewall, Danesh K. Tafti, Andrew B. Graham, Karen A.
Thole, Experimental validation of large eddy simulations of flow
and heat transfer in a stationary ribbed duct, International Journal of
Heat and Fluid Flow 27 (2006) 2432
[7] T.-M. Liou, S.W. Chang, J.S. Chen, T.L. Yang, Yi-An Lan,
Influence of channel aspect ratio on heat transfer in rotating
rectangular ducts with skewed ribs at high rotation numbers,
International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 52 (2009) 5309
5322
[8] Pongjet Promvonge, Wayo Changcharoen, Sutapat Kwankaomeng,
Chinaruk Thianpong, Numerical heat transfer study of turbulent
square-duct flow through inline V-shaped discrete ribs,
International Communications in Heat and Mass Transfer 38 (2011)
13921399
[9] Gongnan Xie, Weihong Zhang, Bengt Sunden, Computational
analysis of the influences of guide ribs/vanes on enhanced heat
transfer of a turbine blade tip-wall, International Journal of Thermal
Sciences 51 (2012) 184e194
[10] Eun Yeong Choi, Yong Duck Choi, Won Suk Lee, Jin Teak Chung,
Jae Su Kwak, Heat transfer augmentation using a ribedimple
compound cooling technique, Applied Thermal Engineering 51
(2013) 435e441
[11] Sukhjinder Singh, Danesh Tafti Colin Reagle, Jacob Delimont,
Wing Ng, Srinath Ekkad, Sand transport in a two pass internal
cooling duct with rib turbulators, International Journal of Heat and
Fluid Flow 46 (2014) 158167
[1]

Figure 5 :Experimental setup (top), two pass section (bottom). [11]

VII. CONCLUSION
From the above reviews we can conclude that a number
of researchers conduct experiment and CFD to study
turbine blade duct cooling analysis. The obtained results
from experimental and computational are well compared
and validated. Since the obtained results get good
agreement different case studies are considered by
introducing aspect ratio or variable parameter in inlet and
outlet. CFD is widely used for calculated the flow analysis
around the turbine blade (e.g. velocity distribution, pressure
distribution etc.) which is affected by changing current of
air velocity, angle of attack, tip speed ratio etc. CFD has
become a mature tool for predicting a wide range of flows;
however, one important ongoing challenge is the accurate
representation of turbulence.

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