Abstract
Quasi-1D conjugate reduced order model is developed to capture aero-thermal physics of effusion cooling in an entire micro turbine blade. The model considers a single wall effusion scheme with internal boundary layer flow between the shell and an inner core. Coolant is supplied inside the leading edge and spread to both suction and pressure sides. The compound effect of multiple effusion rows is used to calculate spanwise-averaged cooling effectiveness. Metal temperature is modeled both in stream-wise and shell thickness directions. The development of the model and a number of numerical/ experimental validation cases are presented in detail in Part I. The Part II of the work is geared towards application of this method to skin cooling of a turbine airfoil by single wall effusion. The reduced order model, with all its subroutines functioning together, is validated against a higher fidelity 3D RANS CFD solution. It is shown that the quasi-1D solver can predict main features of the combined internal and effusion cooling in gas turbine blades at a computational cost which is 105 times lower than RANS. In following, a design optimization is accomplished towards minimizing coolant flow rate while keeping thermal gradients and temperature of the solid within acceptable levels. Implementing this scheme on a typical micro gas turbine vane, optimal distributions of the effusion hole pitch and diameter are found within a given set of constraints. This preliminary design tool potentially enables wider and more efficient usage of effusion cooling in turbine blades.
