Retrofit design of composite cooling structure of a turbine blade by fluid networks and conjugate heat transfer methods

This article discusses the development of the numerical methods of gas flow coupled with heat transfer, and introduces the fluid net-works method for rapid prediction of the performance of the composite cooling structures in turbine blade. The reliability of these methods is verified by comparing experimental data. For a HPT rotor blade, a rapid prediction on the internal cooling structures is first made by using the fluid network analysis, then an assessment of aerodynamic and heat transfer characteristics is conducted. Based on the network analysis results, three ways to improve the design of the cooling structures are tested, i.e., adjusting the cooling gas flow mass ratios for different inner cooling cavities, reducing the flow resistances of the channel turning structures, and improving the local internal cooling structure geometries with high temperature distribution. Through the verification of full three-dimensional gas/solid/coolant conjugate heat transfer calculation, we conclude that the modified design can make the overall temperature distribution more even by significantly reducing the highest temperature of the blade surface, and reasonably matching the parameters of different coolant inlets. The results show that the proposed calculation methods can remarkably reduce the design cycle of complex turbine blade cooling structure.