The Application of Discontinuous Galerkin Methods in Conjugate Heat Transfer Simulations of Gas Turbines

Zeng-Rong Hao, Chun-Wei Gu and Xiao-Dong Ren
Additional contact information
Zeng-Rong Hao: Key Laboratory for Thermal Science and Power Engineering of Education, Department of Thermal Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
Chun-Wei Gu: Key Laboratory for Thermal Science and Power Engineering of Education, Department of Thermal Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
Xiao-Dong Ren: Department of Mathematics, School of Science, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong 999077, China

Energies, 2014, vol. 7, issue 12, 1-21

Abstract: The performance of modern heavy-duty gas turbines is greatly determined by the accurate numerical predictions of thermal loading on the hot-end components. The purpose of this paper is: (1) to present an approach applying a novel numerical technique—the discontinuous Galerkin (DG) method—to conjugate heat transfer (CHT) simulations, develop the engineering-oriented numerical platform, and validate the feasibility of the methodology and tool preliminarily; and (2) to utilize the constructed platform to investigate the aerothermodynamic features of a typical transonic turbine vane with convection cooling. Fluid dynamic and solid heat conductive equations are discretized into explicit DG formulations. A centroid-expanded Taylor basis is adopted for various types of elements. The Bassi-Rebay method is used in the computation of gradients. A coupled strategy based on a data exchange process via numerical flux on interface quadrature points is simply devised. Additionally, various turbulence Reynolds-Averaged-Navier-Stokes (RANS) models and the local-variable-based transition model ?- Re ? are assimilated into the integral framework, combining sophisticated modelling with the innovative algorithm. Numerical tests exhibit good consistency between computational and analytical or experimental results, demonstrating that the presented approach and tool can handle well general CHT simulations. Application and analysis in the turbine vane, focusing on features around where there in cluster exist shock, separation and transition, illustrate the effects of Bradshaw’s shear stress limitation and separation-induced-transition modelling. The general overestimation of heat transfer intensity behind shock is conjectured to be associated with compressibility effects on transition modeling. This work presents an unconventional formulation in CHT problems and achieves its engineering applications in gas turbines.

Keywords: gas turbines; conjugate heat transfer; discontinuous Galerkin methods; Bassi-Rebay scheme; Taylor basis functions; local-variable-based transition model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/7/12/7857/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/7/12/7857/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:7:y:2014:i:12:p:7857-7877:d:42785

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().