Heat transfer and pressure loss of turbulent flow in channels with miniature structured ribs on one wall

This paper presents an experimental and numerical study of turbulent flow heat transfer and pressure loss in channels with structured miniature ribs on one wall with the aim to improve the internal cooling performance of gas turbine blades and combustor liners. Miniature transverse, angled, V-shaped and W-shaped ribs are investigated respectively in the study, and the aspect ratio of the channels is kept to be 6:1, and the rib pitch to height ratio is 10 and the rib height to mean hydraulic diameter ratio is 0.029. The experiments were carried out at the Reynolds numbers ranging from 10,000 to 60,000, and a low-Reynolds number k-epsilon turbulence model was also adopted to simulate the turbulent flow and heat transfer in the channels. Both experimental and numerical results have shown that the shapes of miniature ribs have appreciable influences on the heat transfer and pressure loss performance in the channels. The experiments showed that the W ribs have the highest heat transfer and pressure loss performance in the channel, and the angled ribs have the lowest heat transfer and pressure loss performance in the channel. The W-ribbed channel shows respectively the globally averaged Nusselt numbers and overall Nusselt numbers of 2.2-2.6 and 2.9-3.3 times those of a smooth channel, and the friction factors of 2.5-3.7 times those of the smooth channel, which are higher than those of the V-ribbed channel and the transverse ribbed channel. The miniature structured ribs show appreciable higher thermal performance than the conventional sized ribs. Furthermore, the numerical simulations show different vortex flow structures near the wall induced by the structured miniature ribs on the wall, which are responsible for the high-performance heat transfer enhancement. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.