A Predictive Model for Preliminary Gas Turbine Blade Cooling Analysis

Abstract

The growing trend to achieve a higher turbine inlet temperature (TIT) in the modern gas turbine industry requires a more efficient and advanced cooling system design. Therefore, a complete study of heat transfer is necessary to predict the thermal loadings on the gas turbine vanes and blades. In the current work, a predictive model for the gas turbine blade cooling analysis has been developed. The model is capable of calculating the distribution of coolant mass flow rate (MFR) and metal temperatures of a turbine blade using the mass and energy balance equations at given external and internal boundary conditions. Initially, the performance of the model is validated by demonstrating its capability to predict the temperature distributions for a NASA E3 blade. The model is capable of predicting the temperature distributions with reasonable accuracy, especially on the suction side (SS). Later, this paper documents the overall analysis for the same blade profile but at different boundary conditions to demonstrate the flexibility of the model for other cases. Additionally, guidelines are provided to obtain external heat transfer coefficient (HTC) distributions for the highly turbulent mainstream.