Heat transfer on a film-cooled rotating blade using different turbulence models

A three-dimensional Navier-Stokes code has been used to compute the heat tr ansfer coefficient on a film-cooled, rotating turbine blade. The blade chos en is the ACE rotor with five rows containing 93 film cooling holes coverin g the entire span. This is the only film-cooled rotating blade over which e xperimental data is available for comparison. Over 2.278 million grid point s are used to compute the flow over the blade including the tip clearance r egion, using Wilcox's k-omega model, Coakley's q-omega model, and the zero- equation Baldwin-Lomax (B-L) model. A reasonably good comparison with the e xperimental data is obtained on the suction surface for all the turbulence models. At the leading edge, the B-L model yields a better comparison than the two-equation models. On the pressure surface, however, the comparison b etween the experimental data and the prediction from the k-omega model is m uch better than from the other two models. Overall, the k-omega model provi des the best comparison with the experimental data. However, the two-equati on models require at least 40% more computational resources than the B-L mo del. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.