Integrated Turbine Component Cooling Designs Facilitated by Additive Manufacturing and Optimization
Sponsor: Department of Energy – University Turbine Systems Research Program
Collaborators: University of Texas
The goal of this proposed study is to use AM (additive manufacturing) technology to develop improved overall cooling effectiveness for turbine components, particularly vanes and blades. Two aspects of using AM technology will be explored—use of AM to manufacture turbine component with complex features that cannot be manufactured with conventional techniques, and use of AM for rapid prototyping and testing of turbine components that will ultimately be manufactured using conventional techniques. A fundamental part of this research program is a focus on overall cooling effectiveness, i.e. the combined effects of internal cooling configurations, film cooling, and thermal barrier coatings (TBC). Although the vast majority of studies in the open literature treat these as independent cooling processes that can be arbitrarily combined, there are a number of studies (many in our laboratories) that highlight the interaction among these cooling mechanism causing significant effects on overall cooling performance.
Goals for the collaborations between Penn State and University of Texas (top). llustration of the build direction effects on a range of microchannel cooling channel geometries (bottom).