Heat Transfer and Turbulence in a Turbulated Blade Cooling Circuit

The aero-thermal performance of a typical turbine blade three-pass turbulated cooling circuit geometry was investigated in a 10X plexiglas test model. The model closely duplicated the blade’s leading edge, midchord and trailing edge cooling passage geometries. Steady state heat transfer coefficient distributions along the blade pressure side wall (convex surface) of the cooling circuit passages were measured with a thin-foil heater and a liquid crystal temperature sensor assembly. The heat transfer experiments were conducted on rib-roughened channels with staggered turbulators along the convex and concave surfaces of the cooling passages. Mid-channel axial velocity and turbulence intensity measurements were taken by hot wire anemometry at each passage end of the three-pass cooling circuit to characterize and relate the local thermal performance to the turbulence intensity levels. The near-atmospheric experimental data are compared with results of a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis at the operating internal environment for a IX rotating model of the blade cooling circuit and other turbulator channel geometry heat transfer data investigations. The comparison between the measurements and analysis is encouraging. Differences with other heat transfer data appear reasonably understood and explainable.