Evolution of Rotating Internal Channel for Heat Transfer Enhancement in a Gas Turbine Blade

To achieve higher thermal efficiency in a gas turbine, increasing the turbine inlet temperature is necessary. The rotor blade at the first stage tolerates the highest temperature, and the serpentine internal channel located in the middle chord of the rotor blade is vital in guaranteeing the blade’s service life. Therefore, it is essential to illustrate the evolution of the rotating internal channel in a gas turbine blade. In the paper, the influence of the Coriolis force, including its mechanisms, on the conventional rotating channel are reviewed and analyzed. A way to utilize the positive heat transfer effect of the Coriolis force is proposed. Recent investigations on corresponding novel rotating channels with a channel orientation angle of 90° (called bilaterally enhanced U-channels) are illustrated. Moreover, numerical investigations about the Re effects on bilaterally enhanced smooth U-channels were carried out in the study. The results indicated that bilaterally enhanced U-channels can utilize the Coriolis force positive heat transfer effect on the leading and the trailing walls at the same time. Re and Ro are vital non-dimensional numbers that influence the performance of bilaterally enhanced U-channels. Re and Ro have an independent influence on the heat transfer performance of the bilaterally enhanced U-channel. Ro is good for the heat transfer of the bilaterally enhanced U-channel on both the leading and the trailing walls. Therefore, the bilaterally enhanced U-channel is suitable for application in the middle chord region of a turbine blade, since it can utilize the rotation effect of the rotating blade to improve the heat transfer ability of the blade and thus reduced the blade temperature. At the same Ro, Re positively affects the Nu on the leading and the trailing walls of the Coriolis-utilization rotating smooth U-channel, but plays a negligible role on Nu/Nu0.