CHT Analyses of an Industrial Gas Turbine Blade: Comparison Between an In-House Developed Decoupled Procedure and CFD Coupled Simulations

This paper compares the results of an in-house decoupled procedure (named CHT3D), coupled CFD simulations and experimental data, of the first rotor blade of GE Oil & Gas MS5002E gas turbine. The decoupled procedure consists of a CHT analysis where the internal cooling system is modelled by an in-house thermo-fluid network, external thermal and pressure loads are evaluated through 3D CFD and heat conduction analysis is carried out through 3D FEM. A coupled CFD simulation has been performed with a commercial code including the whole internal cooling system. Experimental data refer to metallographic analysis of a blade operated on an actual engine. A good agreement in terms of blade metal temperature has been found, especially in blade tip region. The main discrepancies between the two methodologies can be located at the leading edge, probably due to the effect of RANS turbulence modelling on film cooling and the different flow split in the internal cooling system.