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AMITY UNIVERSITY, UTTAR PRADESH

AMITY INSTITUTE OF SPACE SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

SEMINAR II
RIB ROUGHENED COOLING PASSEGES
FOR TURBINE BLADE COOLING

Submitted in partial fulfilment of Dual Degree
(B.Tech Aerospace + M.Tech Avionics)
Devi Archana Das
A4717210017
8
th
Semester, 2010-2015
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INDEX
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT..2
LIST OF FIGURES..4
INTRODUCTION.5
GENERAL COOLING TECHNIQUES...5
COMPOUND AND NEW COOLING TECHNIQUES..9
EXPERIMENTAL SETUP.10
PIV DATA DISCUSSION.....11
CONCLUSION.....13
REFERENCES......14











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LIST OF FIGURES
1) Fig 1: Film cooling phenomena
2) Fig 2: Film cooling holes
3) Fig 3: Jet impinging on a hot plate
4) Fig 4:Cooling by impingement and convection
5) Fig 5: Schematic of the test section
6) Fig 6: Time averaging velocity fields, Pg. 18
7) Fig 7: Turbulence intensity contour plots
8) Fig 8: 3D flow topology of a rib













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INTRODUCTION
In modern gas turbine engines, the continuous increase of power for an expected lifetime has
resulted in a continuous increase of cycle pressure ratio and turbine inlet temperature. The
later implies that advanced materials and cooling techniques must be adapted for a safe
operation of the high pressure gas turbine blades and vanes. This need for high power and high
efficiency gas turbine engines forces the designer to continuously increase the turbine inlet
temperature. In recent military applications, the turbine inlet temperature could be as high as
2000K, far above the melting temperature of the most advanced vane and blade materials.
Thus apart from the progress made in the metallurgical domain, a continuous cooling of blade
of turbine 1
st
stages allows operating at temperatures which are far above materials melting
point without affecting component integrity and geometry. The efficiency of the blade cooling
system is therefore strictly related to the safe operation of the engine and complete
understanding of the convection mechanisms resulting from the cooling techniques is
mandatory.
A number of experimental investigations about internal cooling channels with ribs are available
in the open literature. Most of them are however only concerned with the heat transfer
performance (Han, 1988, Han et al., 1992, Taslim, 1997). Detailed aerodynamic measurements
were performed by Schabacker et al. (1999) or Chanteloup and Boeics(2001), among a few
authors. Numerical simulations of the velocity and heat transfer fields have been done using
few DNS and LES computations available in literature on this configuration. The combination of
aerodynamic and heat transfer measurements on the same channel configuration and with the
same boundary conditions seldom appears, and very often the data are too scarce to provide a
complete quantitative description of the flow field.
GENERAL COOLING TECHNIQUES
Several cooling methods approaches are normally considered in high pressure turbines. In
general, turbine blades are cooled by a combination of external film cooling, which limits the
heat flux from the combustion gases, internal convection, ablative cooling, transpiration cooling
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and impingement cooling which extracts the heat from the blade material. In the latter case,
the key issue is to maintain the flow inside the cooling passage as turbulent as possible.
The modern turbine inlet temperatures exceed the melting point of the turbine blade materials
and therefore blade protection is required. One method is to introduce a secondary fluid into
the boundary layer on the surface to be protected. There are different means of introducing
this secondary (or injected or coolant) fluid into the boundary layer including ablation,
transpiration and film cooling. In external cooling applications, cold air bled from the last
compressor stages, is injected onto the hot blade metal surface in order to create a thin
protective layer. This cooling method is known as film cooling and finds great applicability in
industrial and aeronautical applications. Film cooling performance is highly depended on a
number of parameters such as injection geometry, surface curvature and roughness,
turbulence, coolant properties and mass flow. In ablation cooling, an added coating or heat
shield decomposes, and by sublimation and other highly endothermic processes a significant
quantity of gas enters the boundary layer. In transpiration cooling, the surface is usually a
porous material, and the secondary fluid enters the boundary layer through this permeable
surface. Both ablation and transpiration cooling are primarily designed to protect the region
where the secondary fluid enters the boundary layer. They are highly effective in this regard as
a considerable portion of the heat transferred toward the wall can be taken up by the injected
coolant right where the heat transfer load is highest. In addition, the gas entering the boundary
layer effectively thickens it, decreasing the heat transfer rate. These two methods do, however,
suffer from serious disadvantages which preclude their use in many applications. The ablating
material is not in general renewable and so ablation cooling has been restricted to systems with
high heat fluxes of short duration, such as reentering vehicles. This restriction does not apply to
transpiration cooling since a coolant can be continually introduced through the porous surface.
However, porous materials have not had the high strength required for certain applications like
turbine rotor blades and small pore size often leads to clogging and a resulting misdistribution
of coolant flow. In addition, variation in the external pressure distribution can result in a non-
optimum secondary flow distribution through the permeable surface.
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Although a secondary fluid is also added to the boundary layer in film cooling there are
considerable differences in operation and even in goals as compared to ablation and
transpiration cooling. A key difference is that film cooling is not primarily intended as
protection of the surface just at the location of coolant addition, but rather the protection of
the region downstream of the injection location. Film cooling is thus the introduction of a
secondary fluid at one or more discrete locations along a surface exposed to a high
temperature environment to protect that surface exposed to a high temperature environment
to protect that surface not only in the immediate region of injection but also in the
downstream region.

Fig 1: Film cooling phenomena in turbine blade Fig 2: Film cooling holes
A variation of convection cooling, impingement cooling, works by hitting the inner surface of
the blade with high velocity air. This allows more heat to be transferred by convection than
regular convection cooling does. Impingement cooling is used in the regions of greatest heat
loads. In case of turbine blades, the leading edge has maximum temperature and thus heat
load. Impingement cooling is also used in mid chord of the vane. Blades are hollow with a core.
There are internal cooling passages. Cooling air enters from the leading edge region and turns
towards the trailing edge. The impinging jet cooling mode of heat transfer has been tested
extensively for many years and is still an ongoing pursuit. Some issues, among them
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noise reduction, are still being improved. Impingement jets can either be air-powered or use
some form of liquid, typically water. High speed jet impingement on a component surface
creates a thin boundary layer, and thus a high heat transfer equation. There are three common
jet configurations: the free-surface jet, which uses dense liquid in a medium that is less dense,
such as air; the submerged jet, which allows the fluid to impinge in the same medium fluid; and
the confined submerged jet. Determining heat transfer through jet impingement is very
complicated, and depends on many factors. Among the most critical are the Reynolds number,
the Prandtl number, jet diameter, and wall-to-nozzle spacing. It has been seen that for the
same Reynolds number, decreasing the jet diameter will increase the heat transfer coefficient
due to the higher speed. For a constant diameter jet, the heat transfer coefficient is
a function of Reynolds number. For certain values of jet distance to jet diameter, reducing the
distance does not make an appreciable difference in the heat transfer. This is because the
potential core is very close to the surface.

Fig 3: Jet impinging on a hot plate Fig 4: Cooling by jet impingement and convection
Convection cooling works by passing cooling air through passages internal to the blade. Heat is
transferred by conduction through the blade, then by convection into the air flowing inside of
the blade. A large internal surface area is desirable, so the cooling paths tend to be serpentine
and full of small fins. Cooling is achieved by passing the air through these passages from hub
towards the blade tip where the air comes from an air compressor. In case of gas turbine the
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fluid outside is relatively hot which passes through the cooling passage and mixes with the main
stream at the blade tip.
Hence cooling of components of turbine can be achieved by air or liquid cooling. Liquid cooling
seems to be more appropriate because of high specific heat capacity and chances of
evaporative cooling but there can be problem of leakage, corrosion and choking which works
against this method. Air cooling allows to discharge air into main flow without any problem.
Quantity of air required for this purpose is 1-3% of main flow and blade temperature can be
reduced by 200-300C. While all methods have their differences, they all work by using cooler
air (often bled from the compressor) to remove heat from the turbine blades.
COMPOUND AND NEW COOLING TECHNIQUES
The most common internal heat transfer enhancement methods of heat transfer augmentation
in gas turbine airfoils are ribs, pins, jet impingement, and flow disturbing inserts. It is shown in
literature that these enhancement techniques increase heat transfer coefficients. To maintain
the flow inside the cooling passage of turbine blade turbulent all these methods can be used.
These devices act to increase turbulent mixing through the enhancement of turbulence,
generation of secondary flows and, in some cases, production of stream wise oriented
structures. All these features provide a larger magnitude of the turbulent transport over wide
flow volumes, leading to an effective augmentation of the forced convection process.
Unfortunately, together with the augmentation of the heat transfer performance, the pressure
losses also increase, penalizing the engine thermal efficiency. The design of the cooling devices
must therefore be optimized and indeed, a significant portion of the design process of new
turbine vanes is always devoted to this task. The complexity of the channel geometries and of
the three- dimensional, highly turbulent flow behavior makes this task very difficult as well by
experimental as by computational fluid dynamic approaches.
A key factor ensuring the accuracy of the heat transfer and therefore metal temperature
prediction is the thermal boundary condition imposed along the front, upper and rear rib
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surface. A correct understanding of the various heat transfer mechanisms is mandatory, and
requests, from a simulation point of view, an advanced convection approach.
Detailed aero-thermal investigations of the turbulent flow inside rib-roughened turbine blade
cooling channels of various geometries have been conducted using particle image velocimetry.
Inside these passages, the forced convection cooling process is significantly enhanced by the
presence of ribs (turbulence promoters) installed on one or more walls of the channels. The
effects of the rib size and orientation on the flow behavior and therefore on the heat transfer
and pressure distribution along the channel walls, are closely related to the safe operation of
high pressure gas turbine blades. The experiments are carried out on scaled up models of
turbine nozzle or blade cooling channels, working in geometrical and flow similarity conditions.
In many configurations, ribs are installed on one or several walls. Coriolis and buoyancy forces
will play an important role when considering the performance of rotor blades.
EXPERIMENTAL SETUP
The geometry of the test section used for this investigation is shown in Fig. 5. It represents a
scaled up model of an internal cooling channel for gas turbine vanes, with a squared section of
100 100 mm
2
and a length of 2800 mm. To ensure the necessary optical access for the PIV
measurements, the measurement section is made of Plexiglas, while the entrance part is made
of wood. Seven Plexiglas ribs are installed on one wall of the channel. A squared section of 30
30 mm2, providing therefore a blockage ratio of 30%, and an angle of attack of 90 degrees with
respect to the mean flow direction. Their pitch-to-height ratio (p/h) is equal to 10. Air at
atmospheric pressure and temperature is aspirated through the channel by means of a
centrifugal blower. The flow rate is quantified by measuring the inlet velocity profile and the
wall static pressure at the channel inlet. The velocity profile are measured at 8 hydraulic
diameters downstream the test section entry. The velocity profiles are symmetric and turbulent
but not completely developed. The boundary layer thickness is about 30 % of the hydraulic
diameter. The mass flow is set in order to get an engine representative Reynolds number
(40,000). The PIV set-up is made of a 2 cavities Nd-YAG laser, a CCD camera (1280 x 1024 pixels
resolution) and a signal generator to synchronize them. The flow is seeded by small oil particles
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provided by a Laskin nozzle type seeding generator. The PIV images are processed using
W.I.DI.M. (Window Displacement Iterative Multigrid), a software developed at Von Karman
Institute by Scarano and Riethmuller (1999). The uncertainty on the instantaneous velocity is
estimated to be less than 2%, based on the Kline and Mc Clintock (1953) analysis,

Fig 5: Schematic of the test section
PIV DATA DISCUSSION
From the contour lines, it is clear how the obstacle, by reducing the available cross section,
induces a strong acceleration of the flow. This behavior is confirmed by wall static pressure
measurements (Casarsa et al., 2002). The sudden expansion downstream of the rib and the
consequent flow separation leads to the generation of a strong shear layer associated to a wide
recirculation region which, in the averaged flow fields, appears as an organized swirling flow
structure(vortices namely horse shoe vortices). After the reattachment, the flow re-aligns with
the bottom wall and a new boundary layer develops. The latter is accelerated by the free
stream shear forces until it impinges on the next obstacle generating a second separated region
in front of this rib (V3, Fig. 6). Two other separated flow regions are identified in plane 1xy. The
first one is located on top of the rib (V2, Fig. 6) while the second one is a small corner vortex in
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the downstream bottom edge of the obstacle (V1, Fig. 6), counter-rotating with respect to the
main separation bubble.

Fig 6: Time averaged velocity field in the plane 1xy
Fig.7 shows the turbulence intensities (defined as the root mean square of the velocity
fluctuations normalized by the bulk velocity U0 = 6.2 m/s) along the stream wise and vertical
directions in plane 1xy. The highest values are observed on top of the rib, at separation onset.
Very close to the ribbed wall, the highest fluctuations are observed in a region centered on the
mean reattachment point and in a small area in front of the rib. The measurements clearly
demonstrate the strong anisotropic character of the turbulent phenomena

Fig7 : Turbulence intensity contour plots in the stream wise
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Fig 8: 3D flow topology of a rib
CONCLUSION
Further investigations are underway, based on a more detailed analysis of the present data,
aiming to understand regarding the most effective flow mechanisms in the development of the
heat transfer field. This information, if available, might shed some light on the selection of the
appropriate turbulence model. Indeed, the simulation of this rib-roughened channel flow
proved to be still a challenging task in modern CFD. It is experience of the present authors that
the use of standard k-e turbulence models does not lead to accurate predictions of both the
flow and heat transfer fields. The use of more advanced modeling approaches, which consider
the anisotropic character of the near wall velocity fluctuations, proved to be quite efficient for
this kind of application, (Durbin, 1993 and Hermanson et al., 2001) the various combination of
parameters of spacing between ribs, plate spacing from the flow fields would bring variation in
the value of heat transfer coefficients. Even investigations would be performed on various
combinations of turbulence promoters to see the overall effect on heat transfer and hence
blade cooling. This newest entrant in the field of heat transfer has led to number of ongoing
research in the field of advanced blade cooling techniques.
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REFERENCES
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Turbomachinery, Vol. 114, pp 872-880.
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10)Hermanson, K.; Parneix, S.; Von Wolfersdorf, J.; Semmler, K. (2001): Prediction of pressure
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