Duccio Griffini

Conjugate Heat Transfer Analysis of a Film Cooled High-Pressure Turbine Vane Under Realistic Combustor Exit Flow Conditions

In this paper conjugate heat transfer analysis of the cooled vane of the MT1 research high-pressure stage is presented. Inlet boundary conditions (including non-uniform total temperature, non-uniform total pressure, swirl, turbulence intensity and turbulence length scale) are obtained considering the exit flow field of a reactive annular combustor simulator. The combustor model has been designed in order to reproduce data available in literature about exit profiles of real combustion chambers and other combustor simulators. Steady simulations are performed on a hybrid unstructured grid obtained from a grid dependence study. The transitional kT-kL-ω model by Walters and Cokljat is used as turbulent closure. Thermal fields obtained from CHT analysis of the vane considering two different clocking positions with respect to the combustor are compared. Results, including film cooling parameters and High-Pressure Vane aerodynamics, are also compared with a uniform inlet case showing the crucial importance of considering realistic boundary conditions for thermal analysis of turbine components.Copyright

Optical fibre nanotips fabricated by a dynamic chemical etching for sensing applications

Nanoprobe tips are key components in many applications such as scanning probe microscopes, nanoscale imaging, nanofabrication and sensing. This paper describes a dynamic chemical etching method for the fabrication of optical nanoprobes. The tips are produced by mechanically rotating and dipping a silica optical fibre in a chemical etching solution (aqueous hydrofluoric acid) covered with a protection layer. Using different dynamic regimes of the mechanical movements during the chemical etching process, it is possible to vary the cone angle, the shape, and the roughness of the nanoprobes. It is found that the tip profiles are determined by the nonlinear dynamic evolution of the meniscus of the etchant near the fibre. Computational fluid dynamic simulations have been performed, showing that different flow regimes correspond to different shear forces acting on the forming nanotip, in agreement with experimental results. With this method, a high yield of reproducible nanotips can be obtained, thus overcoming ...

Clocking Effects of Inlet Non-Uniformities in a Fully Cooled High-Pressure Vane: A Conjugate Heat Transfer Analysis

A high-pressure vane equipped with a realistic film-cooling configuration has been studied. The vane is characterized by the presence of multiple rows of fan-shaped holes along pressure and suction side while the leading edge is protected by a showerhead system of cylindrical holes. Steady three-dimensional Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) simulations have been performed. A preliminary grid sensitivity analysis with uniform inlet flow has been used to quantify the effect of spatial discretization. Turbulence model has been assessed in comparison with available experimental data.The effects of the relative alignment between combustion chamber and high-pressure vanes are then investigated considering realistic inflow conditions in terms of hot spot and swirl. The inlet profiles used are derived from the EU-funded project TATEF2. Two different clocking positions are considered: the first one where hot spot and swirl core are aligned with passage and the second one where they are aligned with the leading edge.Comparisons between metal temperature distributions obtained from conjugate heat transfer simulations are performed evidencing the role of swirl in determining both the hot streak trajectory within the passage and the coolant redistribution. The leading edge aligned configuration is resulted to be the most problematic in terms of thermal load, leading to increased average and local vane temperature peaks on both suction side and pressure side with respect to the passage aligned case.A strong sensitivity of both injected coolant mass flow and heat removed by heat sink effect has also been highlighted for the showerhead cooling system.© 2015 ASME