Full Surface Heat Transfer Measurement of a Turbine Internal Cooling System Using a Large Scaled Model

A series of experiments were conducted to investigate the detailed heat transfer characteristics of a large scaled model of a turbine blade internal cooling system. The cooling system has one passage in the leading edge and a triple passage for the remained region with two U-bends. A large scaled model (2 times) is designed to acquire high resolution measurement. The similarity of the test model was conducted with Reynolds number at the inlet of the internal cooling system. The model is designed to simulate the flow at engine condition including film extractions to match the changes in flowrates through the internal cooling system. Also, 45 deg ribs were installed for heat transfer enhancement. The experiments were performed varying Reynolds number in the range of 20,000 to 100,000 with and without ribs under stationary condition. This study employs transient heat transfer technique using thermochromic liquid crystal (TLC) to obtain full surface heat transfer distributions. The results show the detailed heat transfer distributions and pressure loss. The characteristics of pressure loss is largely dependent on the changes in cross-sectional area along the passages, the presence of U-bends and the extraction of coolant flow through film holes. The local and area averaged Nusselt number were compared to available correlations. Finally, the thermal performance counting the heat transfer enhancement as well as pressure penalty is presented.