Design and analysis of internal cooling passage of gas turbine using computational fluid dynamics

In advanced gas turbines, the turbine blade-operated temperature is above the melting point of blade material. A sophisticated cooling scheme must be developed for continuous safe operation of gas turbines with high performance. This report describes the development and application of a validated computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modelling approach for internal cooling passages in rotating turbomachinery which analyse change in pressure, velocity, temperature, and pressure of fluid in the passage. Velocity changes in the passage help to determine turbulence created in the passage. The CFD analysis is conducted with smooth passage, straight turbulator passage, skewed turbulator passage with different inlet conditions and best model is finalised with high turbulence output. The analysis is carried out using commercial CFD software on k-E model. On evaluating results of different velocity and temperatures, it is found that straight turbulator has more turbulence when compared to smooth and skewed turbulators.Abbreviations: CFD: computational fluid dynamics; CAD: computer-aided design; k-epsilon: Eddy-viscosity model