Nusselt Correlations in a Trailing Edge Cooling System with Long Pedestals and Ribs

Abstract Detailed TLC measurements have been carried out to estimate the heat transfer coefficient in stationary conditions under high Reynolds numbers in a trailing edge cooling system of a high pressure gas turbine blade. The investigated geometry consists of a 30:1 PMMA scaled model reproducing the typical wedge-shaped discharge duct of a trailing edge cooling system with one row of 7 enlarged pedestals. The section of the channel upstream the pedestal region is used to guide the airflow from the radial hub inlet to the tangential trailing edge outlet; in this section three different surfaces have been studied: one is smooth and the other two are ribbed with +60° and -60° angled ribs respect to the radial direction. This work focuses on the pedestal outlet section, by giving a correlation of the variation of the Nusselt number as a function of the Reynolds number, from 10000 to 40000, in the different inter-pedestal regions along the radial direction. These correlations give the regionally averaged heat transfer coefficients, from the hub to the tip of the model for both smooth and ribbed cases. The interest of these results is the use for the design of the trailing edge blade cooling systems, under the investigated Reynolds number range, that it is the typical case of the industrial application