Effect of casing purge flow on heat transfer and cooling performance of blade squealer tip for a gas turbine stage

Abstract

The first stage of GE-E3 turbine is employed to investigate effect of casing purge flow upstream rotor blade tip. Three-dimensional Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations and standard k-ω model are solved to obtain tip heat transfer simulations. The results reveal that: heat transfer coefficient of blade tip surface can be significantly reduced when casing purge flow is set. Tip averaged heat transfer coefficient of cases with and without swirly velocity casing purge flow decrease 3.5% and 3.4% compared with the case without casing purge flow. Compared with case which blowing ratio equals to 0.5, it can be found that averaged tip heat transfer coefficient of cases which blowing ratio equals to 1.0 and 1.5 decrease 2.3% and 1.8%, respectively. Setting blowing ratio as 1.0 can best cool tip surface without wasting cold air resources. Increasing rotating speed can induce cold air entering tip trailing region and improve local cooling effect. Flow structure inside the tip clearance are also revealed and discussed.