Conjugate Heat Transfer Investigation on Swirl-Film Cooling at the Leading Edge of a Gas Turbine Vane

Abstract

Numerical calculation of conjugate heat transfer was carried out to study the effect of combined film and swirl cooling at the leading edge of a gas turbine vane with a cooling chamber inside. Two cooling chambers (C1 and C2 cases) were specially designed to generate swirl in the chamber, which could enhance overall cooling effectiveness at the leading edge. A simple cooling chamber (C0 case) was designed as a baseline. The effects of different cooling chambers were studied. Compared with the C0 case, the cooling chamber in the C1 case consists of a front cavity and a back cavity and two cavities are connected by a passage on the pressure side to improve the overall cooling effectiveness of the vane. The area-averaged overall cooling effectiveness of the leading edge () was improved by approximately 57%. Based on the C1 case, the passage along the vane was divided into nine segments in the C2 case to enhance the cooling effectiveness at the leading edge, and was enhanced by 75% compared with that in the C0 case. Additionally, the cooling efficiency on the pressure side was improved significantly by using swirl-cooling chambers. Pressure loss in the C2 and C1 cases was larger than that in the C0 case.