Experimental and Numerical Study of Jet Impingement Cooling for
Improved Gas Turbine Blade Internal Cooling with In-line and
Staggered Nozzle Arrays
Abdel Rahman Salem
Department of Mechanical Engineering
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
115 E. Reindl Way
Glendale, WI 53212
assalem@uwm.edu
Farah Nazifa Nourin
Department of Mechanical Engineering
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
115 E. Reindl Way
Glendale, WI 53212
fnourin@uwm.edu
Mohammed Abousabae
Department of Mechanical Engineering
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
115 E. Reindl Way
Glendale, WI 53212
abousab2@uwm.edu
Ryoichi S. Amano
Department of Mechanical Engineering
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
115 E. Reindl Way
Glendale, WI 53212
amano@uwm.edu
ABSTRACT
Internal cooling of gas turbine blades is performed with the combination of impingement cooling and serpentine
channels. Besides gas turbine blades, the other turbine components such as turbine guide vanes, rotor disks, and
combustor wall can be cooled using jet impingement cooling. This study is focused on jet impingement cooling, in
order to optimize the coolant flow, and provide the maximum amount of cooling using the minimum amount of
coolant. The study compares between different nozzle configurations (In-line and staggered), two different
Reynold’s numbers (1500 and 2000), and different stand-off distances (Z/D) both experimentally and numerically.
The stand-off distances (Z/D) considered are 3, 5, and 8. In jet impingement cooling, the jet of fluid strikes
perpendicular to the target surface to be cooled with high velocity to dissipate the heat. The target surface is heated
up by a DC power source. The experimental results are obtained by means of thermal image processing of the
captured Infra-Red (IR) thermal images of the target surface. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis were
employed to predict the complex heat transfer and flow phenomena, primarily the line-averaged and area-averaged
Nusselt number and the cross-flow effects.
In the current investigation, the flow is confined along with the nozzle plate and two parallel surfaces forming a bi-
directional channel (bi-directional exit). The results show a comparison between heat transfer enhancement with in-
line and staggered nozzle arrays. It is observed that the peaks of the line averaged Nusselt Number (Nu) become less
as the stand-off distance (Z/D) increases. It is also observed that the fluctuations in the stagnation heat transfer are
caused by the impingement of the primary vortices originating from the jet nozzle exit.
Keywords: Experimental Heat Transfer, CFD, Gas Turbine Blades, Jet Impingement Cooling, Stand-off
Distance
Accepted Manuscript Not Copyedited
Journal of Energy Resources Technology. Received April 26, 2020;
Accepted manuscript posted June 03, 2020. doi:10.1115/1.4047600
Copyright © 2020 by ASME
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