Steady and Unsteady Modeling for Heat Transfer Predictions of High Pressure Turbine Blade Internal Cooling

Abstract

This work focuses on numerical simulations of flows in blade internal cooling system. Large Eddy Simulation (LES) and Reynolds-Averaged Navier Stokes (RANS) approaches are compared in a typical blade cooling related problem. The case is a straight rib-roughened channel with high blockage ratio, computed and compared for both a periodic and full spatial domains. The configuration was measured at the Von Karman Institute (VKI) using Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) in near gas turbine operating conditions. Results show that RANS models used fail to predict the full evolution of the flow within the channels where massive separation and large scale unsteady features are evidenced. In contrast LES succeeds in reproducing these complex flow motions and both mean and fluctuating components are clearly improved in the channels and in the near wall region. Periodic computations are gauged against the spatial computational domain and results on the heat transfer problem are addressed.