Novel concepts and geometries as alternatives to conventional circular pin fins for gas turbine blade cooling applications

Short cylindrical pin fins with circular cross-sections are one of the most common types of cooling devices used in turbine blades. However it is by no means clear that the circular shape is the most efficient geometry in terms of heat transfer enhancement and pressure loss minimization. Therefore, novel pin fin concepts and geometries are developed and introduced as alternatives to conventional circular pin fins. The idea of using fluidic oscillators as turbulent heat transfer enhancement devices led to the novel concept of “oscillator fin”. Also the idea of using more elliptical fin shapes resulted in the development of the SEF (Standard Elliptical Fin), the N fin (Derived from NACA four-digit series of airfoils) and the Egg fin (A hybrid circular-elliptical fin). Detailed experimental and computational investigations are performed in order to determine the heat transfer and pressure loss characteristics of these new concepts and the results are compared to the characteristics of conventional circular pin fins. The experimental analysis included endwall convective heat transfer coefficient measurements, wake total pressure surveys and wake flow field measurements and visualizations using particle image velocimetry (PIV). The isolated single fin measurements revealed that the oscillator fin concept is not working as expected and does not provide any advantage over circular fins. The SEFs and the N fins were found to be the most effective cooling devices in terms of both heat transfer enhancement and pressure loss minimization. The characteristics of the SEF and N fins are also determined for a 2 row staggered array configuration. It is observed that the endwall heat transfer enhancement capability of the SEFs and the N fins is about 25% less than the circular fins. However these elliptical fins caused tremendous reduction in loss levels from 100% to 200%. The main reason of this high levels of pressure loss in circular fin arrays is determined to be the huge low momentum wake region compared to the wakes of the elliptical fins. Hence, the SEFs and the N fins are found to be excellent alternatives to conventional circular pin fins used in gas turbine blade cooling applications.