Session: 12-01: Additive Manufacturing in Film Cooling

Paper Number: 153314

Design and Fabrication of a Thermally Optimized Gas Turbine Nozzle 

High thermal loadings of gas turbine nozzles necessitate effective active cooling schemes. Modern designs synthesize internal and external cooling configurations tailored to the cooling requirements of the leading edge, mid-chord, and trailing edge regions. Few studies in literature consider the cooling performance of a complete nozzle design, and even fewer detail the design process of integrating all the cooling configurations. In the present study, a symmetric nozzle, or strut, was designed with optimized internal and external cooling configurations to meet the heat load requirements stemming from the exhaust of a pure hydrogen combustor. The external design of the strut features used recently developed advanced film cooling holes enabled by additive manufacturing, and the internal design employed jet impingement cooling and inclined pin fins. Early design iterations were guided with correlations based on the isolated cooling performance of each cooling scheme. RANS computations evaluated these designs to ensure adequate cooling, and the design was modified accordingly. Computational predictions indicated the surface temperature of the strut remains well below the maximum allowable temperature, and the film cooling coverage is sufficient. Low temperature testing was conducted in a companion study to provide performance feedback, and future work will validate the cooling performance of this strut model in a hydrogen combustor test facility.

Presenting Author: Elise Flachs University of Texas at Austin

Presenting Author Biography: Elise Flachs is a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellow and is pursuing a PhD in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin.

Authors:

Elise Flachs University of Texas at Austin
David Bogard University of Texas at Austin