Optimization of oil-cooled blade structures based on data-driven approaches

Abstract The continuous escalation of turbine inlet temperatures in aero-engine applications has rendered traditional air-cooling techniques insufficient to undertake the efficient cooling of turbine guide vanes solely. In this context, oil-cooling technology has emerged as a potent complement to air-cooling methods. The stable operating temperature limit of fuel, when used as a coolant, is merely 523 K. In contrast, turbine guide vanes operate at temperatures as high as 1, 900 K, with material allowable temperatures strictly constrained within 1, 373 K. Designing efficient and safe oil-cooled blade structures becomes paramount to the successful application of oil-cooling technology. This paper presents a layered oil-cooled turbine blade structural design scheme, which ingeniously integrates insulation and heat conduction mechanisms, effectively enhancing the oil-cooling system’s adaptability to complex thermal flow environments and notably optimizing the uniformity of temperature distribution on the blade surface. Leveraging commercial simulation software, reduced order models and high-fidelity response surface models of the oil-cooled blades were constructed to conduct a parametric analysis of the layered oil-cooling structure. Under the conditions of ensuring cooling effectiveness and preventing fuel overheating, optimal design parameters for the internal structure of the layered oil-cooled turbine blades were identified, thereby establishing a comprehensive data-driven optimization methodology framework that supports thermal protection design in aero-engine.