Flow field and heat transfer in a rotating rib-roughened cooling passage

A great effort has been carried out over the recent years in the understanding of the flow field and heat transfer in the internal cooling channels present in turbine blades. Indeed, advanced cooling schemes have not only lead to the increase of the gas turbine efficiency by increasing the Turbine Inlet Temperature above the material melting temperature, but also the increase of the turbine lifespan. To allow such progresses, modern experimental and numerical techniques have been widely applied in order to interpret and optimize the aerodynamics and heat transfer in internal cooling channels. However, the available data is limited in the case of internal cooling channels in turbine rotor blades. Rotation and temperature gradients introduce Coriolis and centripetal buoyancy forces in the rotating frame of reference, modifying significantly the aerothermodynamics from that of the stationary passages. In the case of turbine rotor blades, most of the investigations are either based on point-wise measurements or are constraint to low rotational regimes. The main objective of this work is to study the detailed flow and heat transfer of an internal cooling channel at representative engine dimensionless operating conditions. This work introduces a laboratory test section that operates ribbed channels over a wide range of Reynolds, Rotation and Buoyancy numbers. In the present work, the Reynolds number ranges from 15,000 to 55,000, the maximum Rotation number is equal to 0.77, and the maximum Buoyancy number is equal to 0.77. The new experimental facility consists in a versatile design that allows the interchangeability of the tested geometry, so that channels of different aspect ratios and rib geometries can be easily fitted. Particle Image Velocimetry and Liquid Crystal Thermography are performed to provide accurate velocity and heat transfer measurements under the same operating conditions, which lead to a unique experimental data set. Moreover, Large Eddy Simulations are carried out to give a picture of the entire flow field and complement the experimental observations. Additionally, the numerical approach intends to provide a robust methodology that is able to provide high fidelity predictions of the performance of internal cooling channels.