Conjugated heat transfer analysis of gas turbine vanes using MacCormack's technique

Abstract

It is well known that turbine engine efficiency can be improved by increasing the turbine inlet gas temperature. This causes an increase of heat load to the turbine components. Current inlet temperature level in advanced gas turbine is far above the melting point of the vane material. Therefore, along with high temperature material development, sophisticated cooling scheme must be developed for continuous safe operation of gas turbine with high performance. Gas turbine blades are cooled internally and externally. Internal cooling is achieved by passing the coolant through passages inside the blade and extracting the heat from outside of the blade. This paper focuses on turbine vanes internal cooling. The effect of arrangement of rib and parabolic fin turbulator in the internal cooling channel and numerical investigation of temperature distribution along the vane material has been presented. The formulations for the internal cooling for the turbine vane have been done and these formulated equations are solved by MacCormack's technique.