Conjugate Heat Transfer Analysis of a Film Cooled High-Pressure Turbine Vane Under Realistic Combustor Exit Flow Conditions

Abstract

In this paper conjugate heat transfer analysis of the cooled vane of the MT1 research high-pressure stage is presented. Inlet boundary conditions (including non-uniform total temperature, non-uniform total pressure, swirl, turbulence intensity and turbulence length scale) are obtained considering the exit flow field of a reactive annular combustor simulator. The combustor model has been designed in order to reproduce data available in literature about exit profiles of real combustion chambers and other combustor simulators. Steady simulations are performed on a hybrid unstructured grid obtained from a grid dependence study. The transitional kT-kL-ω model by Walters and Cokljat is used as turbulent closure. Thermal fields obtained from CHT analysis of the vane considering two different clocking positions with respect to the combustor are compared. Results, including film cooling parameters and High-Pressure Vane aerodynamics, are also compared with a uniform inlet case showing the crucial importance of considering realistic boundary conditions for thermal analysis of turbine components.