Flow and Heat Transfer Predictions for a Flat-Tip Turbine Blade

Abstract

Numerical calculations are performed to simulate the tip leakage flow and heat transfer on the GE-E3 High-Pressure-Turbine (HPT) rotor blade. The calculations are performed for a single blade with periodic conditions imposed along the two boundaries in the circumferential-pitch direction. Cases considered are a flat blade tip at three different tip gap clearances of 1%, 1.5% and 2.5% of the blade span. The numerical results are obtained for two different pressure ratios (ratio of inlet total pressure to exit static pressure) of 1.2 and 1.32 and an inlet turbulence level of 6.1%. To explore the effect of turbulence models on the heat transfer results, three different models of increasing complexity and computational effort (standard high Re k-ε model, RNG k-ε and Reynolds Stress Model) are investigated. The predicted tip heat transfer results are compared with the experimental data of Azad [1], and show satisfactory agreement with the data. Hear transfer predictions for all three turbulence models are comparable, and no significant improvements are obtained with the Reynolds-stress model.