Advanced Cooling of Gas Turbine Blades with Sodium Liquid and Air

Gas turbines are extensively used for air craft propulsion, land based power generation and industrial applications. Thermal efficiency of gas turbine can be improved by increasing turbine rotor inlet temperature. The current rotor inlet temperature in advanced gas turbine is for above the melting point of blade material. A sophisticated cooling scheme must be developed for continuous safe operation of gas turbines with high performance. Gas turbines are cooled externally and internally. Several methods have been suggested for the cooling of blades and vanes. The technique that describes in thesis is by cooling the blade by circulating sodium liquid filled inside it. The hot less denser sodium liquid travels the bottom region of the blade and transfer heat to the high velocity air passing near it. In this thesis a turbine blade model is designed and modeled in CATIA V5. CFD analysis of the model is performed for variant models. A comparative study of the results like temperature, turbulent kinetic energy and heat transfer rate through cooling air is made to find the best model which delivers effective cooling of the blade.