Date of Award

Fall 11-2007

Document Type

Thesis - Open Access

Degree Name

Master of Science in Aerospace Engineering

Department

Aerospace Engineering

Committee Chair

Magdy Attia

Committee Member

Eric Perrell

Committee Member

Hany Nakhla

Committee Member

Uyi Idahosa

Abstract

The present work looks at an advanced turbine stator blade design and evaluates its thermal performance relative to a standard design. A new turbine stator blade is designed to eliminate the horseshoe vortex appearing at the leading edge. The new design is characterized by an extension of the leading edge at the hub and at the tip of about 30% of chord. By comparing this new design to an ordinary one (featuring straight leading edge), the present thesis verifies the horseshoe vortex elimination, and compares the thermal attributes of the fluid. The fluid is three-dimensional, viscous and turbulent. The analysis looks at the steady-state solution only. The meshing operation and the calculations are made using NASA-developed 3D codes: TCGRID and Swift. The author concludes that the drop in blade surface temperature reaches 109.6 K in a designated region of the tip. Many benefits can be expected from this result, more precisely in the choice of material, the cooling strategy, the mechanical properties, and the cost of the new blade. In addition, a conjugate heat transfer analysis is made on the interior of the blade, to evaluate the heat dissipation through internal cooling. The software tools used in the heat transfer analysis were MS Excel, DS Catia, Gambit, and Fluent. The blade is cooled down internally by cool air flowing spanwise through cooling passages. No additional conclusion can be reached from the conjugate heat transfer analysis, but a path is laid for further work on the unsteady state case and the mechanical performance. Such work will lead to a final design of the blade.

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