Abstract

This paper studies the effect of mesh topologies such as hybrid and structured meshes on the evaluation of wall heat transfer coefficient (HTC) and pressure loss of a blade cooling passage. An experimental model is chosen; it has five-row of stream wise staggered elliptical pin-fin fitted inside a 10o wedge-shape duct and one-row of fillet circular pin-fin in the exit region. Simulations consider two types; i.e. 'warm' test with isothermal wall condition and 'cold' test with adiabatic wall condition respectively, in order to evaluate flow and thermal characteristics such as HTC and pressure loss. Further simulations are carried out by varying Re number, wall surfaces roughness, inlet turbulence intensity and turbulence models. It was found that for unstructured or structured mesh with proper near wall and middle passage grid resolutions, CFD predicted HTC and pressure loss are in good agreement with available experimental data. The wall surface roughness is found to have significant impact on HTC, simulations produce results in better agreement with experimental measurements. Simulation results also confirm that inlet turbulence intensity and turbulence model have insignificant effect of predicting the pin-fin wall and end wall heat transfer coefficient. © (2013) Trans Tech Publications, Switzerland.