Task

Cooling thermally and mechanically highly loaded high-pressure turbine blades (HPT blades) is essential for the operation of modern gas turbines and aircraft engines. At ITS, the cooling effectiveness of various blade cooling concepts is experimentally investigated and evaluated using a machine-representative test rig. Complementary numerical studies provide highly resolved temperature fields of the experimental geometry. In addition to evaluating cooling performance, the temperature data obtained can also be used within a turbine blade lifetime assessment. A prerequisite for this is the transferability of test rig data to the actual installation and operating conditions in the engine.

The aim of this thesis is to develop a suitable thermal modelling method that provides highly resolved temperature and stress fields of the turbine blade under real operating conditions. The work comprises the following tasks:

• Literature review on turbine blade cooling, heat transfer, high-temperature materials, damage mechanisms, and similarity theory
• Analysis of relevant similarities and differences between the test rig and the engine
• Development and evaluation of suitable transfer methods using characteristic dimensionless numbers (Mach, Reynolds, Nusselt, Biot) and estimation of the resulting error
• Application and comparison of the methods, followed by the identification of a suitable approach for determining local temperatures and thermal stresses