Heat Transfer to a Rotating Drum in an Annulus With a Stator Blade Row and Axial Throughflow

Abstract

This paper describes an experimental and numerical investigation of heat transfer to a rotor drum rotating in an annulus with an axial throughflow of air. The application of the work is principally to the transient heating of axial compressor rotor drums, and the results obtained extend the range of previously published correlations by an order of magnitude. Rotational Reynolds numbers (Reω = ωri2/ν) up to 1.5 × 106 and axial Reynolds numbers (ReD = uaDh/ν, Dh = 2(ro – ri)) up to 3.7 × 105 have been achieved experimentally. A new experimental facility is described in which a 400mm diameter rotor drum, instrumented with miniature thermopile type heat flux meters and thermocouples, can be air turbine driven at up to 10000rpm. The drum rotates in an annulus with a gap of 30mm in which complete rows of stator vanes can be mounted to enable the effect of vane/rotor drum clearance to be examined. A correlation for the heat transfer between the rotor drum and a stator blade row is presented for varying axial and rotational Reynolds numbers and blade/rotor drum radial clearance.