Coupled Fluid/Solid Heat Transfer Computation for Turbine Discs

Abstract

This paper considers the coupling of a finite element thermal conduction solver with a steady, finite volume fluid flow solver. Two methods were considered for passing boundary conditions between the two codes — transfer of metal temperatures and either convective heat fluxes or heat transfer coefficients and air temperatures. These methods have been tested on two simple rotating cavity test cases and also on a more complex real engine example. Convergence rates of the two coupling methods were compared. Passing heat transfer coefficients and air temperatures was found to give the quickest convergence. The coupled method gave agreement with the analytic solution and a conjugate solution of the simple free disc problem. The predicted heat transfer results for the real engine example showed some encouraging agreement, although some modelling issues are identified.