| Increasing the combustor exit temperature in gas turbines is an effective means to increase engine power. While occasional metallurgical advances allow gradual temperature increases, improving the internal/external cooling of the blades is the only way to permit significant temperature gains. In this work, a methodology for aerodynamic and conjugate heat transfer computational analysis of cooled turbine blades is developed. Flow solutions are obtained using an implicit, three-dimensional, finite-element Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes flow solver. Efficient non-reflecting boundary conditions are derived and implemented to reduce the size of the solution domain and accelerate convergence. These are shown to be essential for the accurate capturing of shock waves and wakes. The methodology is demonstrated on the convection-cooled NASA-C3X turbine vane, by coupling heat conduction in the solid vane with heat transfer from the internal cooling flow and the external hot-gas flow. Both aerodynamic and heat transfer results are compared against experimental data. |
