Data-Driven Conjugate Heat Transfer Analysis of a Gas Turbine Vane

Abstract

Cooling structures of gas turbine blades have become more complex to achieve a better cooling effect. Therefore, heat transfer analysis tools with higher accuracy and efficiency are required to verify the effectiveness of cooling designs and continuously improve the design. In this work, a data-driven method is combined with a decoupled conjugate heat transfer analysis. The analysis object is a typical air-cooled gas turbine first-stage vane with film cooling, impingement cooling, and pin-fin cooling. In addition, a conventional 3-D conjugate heat transfer simulation of the vane was executed for contrast. Results show that this method shortens the time of the heat transfer analysis process significantly and ensures accuracy. It proves that the data-driven method is effective for the evaluation of a modern gas turbine cooling design and is an improvement compared to the traditional three-dimensional heat transfer analysis method.