In this article, a compound unit of swirl and impingement cooling techniques is designed to study the performance of flow and heat transfer using multi-conical nozzles in a leading-edge of a gas turbine blade. Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes equations and the Shear Stress Transport model are numerically solved under different nozzle Reynolds numbers and temperature ratios. Results indicated that the compound cooling unit could achieve a 99.7% increase in heat transfer enhancement by increasing the nozzle Reynolds number from 10,000 to 25,000 at a constant temperature ratio. Also, there is an 11% increase in the overall Nusselt number when the temperature ratio increases from 0.65 to 0.95 at identical nozzle Reynolds number. At 10,000 and 15,000 of nozzle Reynolds numbers, the compound cooling unit achieves 47.9% and 39.8% increases and 63.5% and 66.3% increases in the overall Nusselt number comparing with the available experimental swirl and impingement models, respectively. A correlation for the overall Nusselt number is derived as a function of nozzle Reynolds number and temperature ratio to optimize the results. The current study concluded that the extremely high zones and uniform distribution of heat transfer are perfectly achieved with regard to the characteristics of heat transfer of the compound cooling unit.

The variable geometry turbine (VGT) has been widely used in different fields due to its higher efficiency and lower fuel consumption at part-load. However, the flow field in a VGT is characterized by the leakage flow through the radial clearance of rotational vane compared with a general fixed vane turbine. Numerical simulations are conducted on a linear turbine cascade to reduce the leakage flow based on passive control method. The aerodynamic performances and flow fields are compared for four kinds of tip configuration firstly. Then, the effect of variable geometry on the linear turbine cascade aerodynamic performance is investigated for five installation angles ranging from –5 to 5 deg. In addition, the development patterns and trends of the tip leakage vortex and the passage vortex are analyzed. The results show that the squealer tip and the rotating axis have a significant impact on suppressing leakage flow. The leakage flow rate has a tendency to decrease, and the total pressure coefficient is gradually increased when installation angle ranges from –5 to 5 deg. The interactions between tip leakage vortex and passage vortex leads to the different trends on leakage flow at various installation angles and axial sections.

A comparative study of the flow field and heat transfer characteristics between swirl and impingement of mist/air cooling on blade leading edge is carried out to find a better cooling configuration for phase transition cooling. The Eulerian–Lagrangian particle tracking technique is used to investigate mist/air cooling. Comparisons are made between these two cooling forms in such aspects as vortex structure, heat transfer enhancement, pressure loss, and thermal uniformity with and without mist injection. The influences of mist ratio and Reynolds numbers on these parameters are studied in this paper. Results show that heat transfer is enhanced while pressure loss and thermal uniformity are improved by the swirl flow created by vortex impingement. The heat transfer performance increases by about 46.2 and 51.9%, respectively, for impingement and swirl cooling with 8% mist injection, and the pressure loss coefficient increases by 19%. The difference of heat transfer coefficient between swirl and impingement cooling with and without mist injection at high Reynolds number is larger than that at low Reynolds number. In addition, the heat transfer nonuniform coefficient of swirl cooling is about 15% lower than for impingement cooling.

In this paper, a CFD model is used to simulate the effect of spray atomization at the compressor inlet on a multistage axial subsonic compressor. Special attention is paid to the change of compressor characteristics with wet compression under different rotating speeds to gain the compressor characteristic lines of wet compression. The effects of pneumatic crushing and blade-wall-collision on water droplets and droplet trajectories are contrasted and analyzed under different spray conditions. Then, the whole/stage-by-stage compressor performances and the flow field are also investigated under dry and wet cases near the design operating condition. The results indicate that multistage compressor performance can be improved with wet compression under the proper water spaying rate and a small droplet size. The influence of pneumatic crushing on the water droplets below 20 μm can be ignored, and the effect of blade collision on water droplets above 5μm should be considered in the wet compression conditions. Compared to the dry compression, as measured by volume flow, wet compression with proper spaying conditions makes the front stages operate within a relatively high flow range and the back stages operate within a relatively low flow range. Additionally, the operating state with wet compression is opposite to the compressor operating near the surge boundary, which presents the phenomenon of “former surged and back blocking”.

The idea of utilizing a finely dispersed water-in-air mixture has been proven to be a feasible technique to produce very high cooling rates. The accuracy of numerical simulation program for conjugate heat transfer methodology is verified with the Mark II transonic high pressure turbine stator which is cooled by internal convection through radial round pipes, and different turbulence models and transition models are employed to analyze the influence on results. On the basis of it, the mist cooling is simulated under typical gas turbine operating conditions for internal convective cooling to discuss the improvement of cooling performance. Though the results indicate that mist cooling can decrease the temperature of boundary layer without impact on the temperature of the mainstream and the thickness of boundary layer, the cooling capacity is limited by inadequate evaporation of mist. Considering the distribution of thermal stress and mist evaporation, a compound cooling blade of film cooling with trailing edge ejection is acquired which is modified from the blade of Mark II internal convective cooling; the effects of various parameters including mist concentration and mist diameter on the improvement of cooling performance are investigated, meanwhile the impact of curvature on cooling efficiency and mist trajectory is analyzed finally.