Session: 12-03 Endwall Film Cooling

Paper Number: 80225

80225 - Turbine Vane Passage Cooling Experiments With a Close-Coupled Combustor-Turbine Interface Geometry Part 1: Describing the Flow 

Due to the proximity of the first stage gas turbine vanes to the combustor, coolant introduced to the combustor walls interacts with the endwall film coolant and changes the vane passage flow physics. Recent results show that combustor coolant contributes significantly to cooling the endwall and vane surfaces. In this report, the traditional combustor-turbine interface was modified to improve overall cooling performance. The performance of this new injection cooling scheme on passage fluid dynamics and surface cooling is assessed. The first of this two-part paper reports detailed experimental tests that document secondary flows and coolant transport throughout the vane passage for four combustor coolant flowrates. The experimental facility imitates combustor coolant injection and engine-level turbulence and has the modified transition duct design, called the ‘close-coupled combustor-turbine interface.’ The ‘impingement vortex’ seen in previous studies with combustor cooling appears as the dominant secondary flow. It is observed in the present study over a wide range of flowrates, confirming its tie to the combustor coolant flowrate and not the combustor-turbine interface geometry. It was found, however, that the location and size of the impingement vortex are affected by coolant flowrate. The second of this two-part paper discusses the impact of the observed secondary flows on cooling vane passage surfaces.

Presenting Author: Terrence Simon University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

Presenting Author Biography: Terrence W. Simon is the Ernst G. Eckert Professor of the Department of Mechanical Engineering. His major research interests include experiments, computation and visualization of heat, mass and momentum transfer in laminar, turbulent, transitional and unsteady flows, including flows through porous media and processes with phase change. Applications range from flow and heat transfer in plasma cutting tools and plasma flow actuators, electronics and optics, Stirling and gas turbine engines and MW-level grid energy storage systems. He is an active member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (including a past five-year term as the Senior Technical Editor of the Journal of Heat Transfer), the International Centre for Heat and Mass Transfer (in which he is now the President and has served on the Executive Committee), and the American Society of Thermal and Fluids Engineers (for which he co-chaired the International Workshop on Heat Transfer in 2017).

Authors:

Kedar Nawathe University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Aaditya Nath University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Yong Kim Solar Turbines Inc.
Terrence Simon University of Minnesota, Twin Cities