Review of Air and Liquid Metal based Cooling

of Turbine Blades
AE211:Engineering Thermodynamics Course Project

Gaurav Gupta
Student ID: SC21B026
Bachelors of Technology Aerospace Engineering
Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology, Thiruvanthapuram

October 2022
IIST, Thiruvanthapuram Cooling of Turbine Blade

Contents
1 Introduction 2

2 Air Cooling Methods 3

2.1 Internal Cooling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.2 External Cooling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

3 Liquid Cooling Methods 4

3.1 Mechanism of liquid cooling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

4 Results 5

5 Discussion 6

6 Conclusion 6

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IIST, Thiruvanthapuram Cooling of Turbine Blade

Abstract
Cooling of turbine blades is an absolute necessity to extend the working life and empower the capability
of gas turbines. The cooling of turbine blades are achieved with the help of either gas based coolant or
a liquid based coolant. In the report the different air cooling methods used in industry were introduced.
These methods were compared with a recent novel liquid based cooling method [3]. The method suggested
by Zhang et. al. used GaIn20 , a liquid-metal as coolant. The results of the study claim 167% higher cooling
approach than air cooling methods. It also claims significantly better heat transfer and cooling efficiency.
But the study fails short to discuss about the effects of using liquid metal on the working life of turbine,
corrosion of the blades and choking of passages within the blades. These important aspects were missing
in the study which makes it difficult to determine the practicality of the idea. This research gap can be
narrowed by construction of a technology demonstration and study in the missing aspects.

1 Introduction can lead to blade failure and destroy the engine, so

turbine blades are carefully designed to withstand
In a gas turbine engine, a single turbine stage con- these conditions that can lead to fracture, yield, or
sists of a rotating disk that supports many turbine creep failure. It has been. Furthermore, early gas
blades and a stationary shroud of nozzle guide vanes turbines had a temperature of about 820 ◦ C (1,500
in front of the blades. The turbine is connected to ◦
F), while modern gas turbine first stages (imme-
the compressor by a shaft (a complete rotating as- diately after the combustor) have temperatures of
sembly, also called a ”spool”) (Fig.1). about 1,370 ◦ C (2,500 °F). ). Modern military jet
Air is compressed as it passes through the com- engines such as the Snecma M88 can reach turbine
pressor, increasing its pressure and temperature. temperatures of 1,590 ◦ C (2,900 ◦ F). These high tem-
The temperature is then raised by the combustion peratures weaken the blade and make it susceptible
of fuel in the combustor between the compressor and to creep rupture. High temperatures can also make
turbine. High temperature and high pressure gas blades more susceptible to corrosion damage. Fi-
passes through the turbine. A turbine stage ex- nally, vibrations in the engine and turbine itself can
tracts energy from this flow, lowers the gas pres- cause fatigue failure.
sure and temperature, and transfers kinetic energy These challenges were initially met by the devel-
to the compressor. This makes the gas turbine self- opment of new materials for the turbine blades. The
sufficient and the turbine an integral component. newly developed materials were expected to have
Turbines work similarly to compressors, but only high temperature resistance and strength. With de-
in reverse when it comes to energy exchange between velopment of material science and research in the
gas and machine. There is a direct correlation be- field of alloys and manufacturing methods led to de-
tween changes in gas temperature (compressor up, velopment of many such materials. One of the first
turbine down) and shaft power input (compressor) such materials was Nimonic.
or output (turbine).

Figure 1: Cross-section of a turbofan engine

Figure 2: A turbine blade with Thermal Barrier
Turbine blades are exposed to a very harsh envi- Coating
ronment within a gas turbine. They are exposed to
high temperatures, high loads and potentially high Later, the development of superalloys and single-
vibration environments. All three of these factors crystal materials led to further increase in the tem-

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IIST, Thiruvanthapuram Cooling of Turbine Blade

perature resistance. Another major development was through hollow passages internal to the blade
Thermal Barrier Coatings (TBC) (Fig.2). These (Fig.4).The heat from the blade is transferred
coatings provided corrosion and oxidation resistance. to the air through the mode of convection.
It also increased the temperature capability by Having a larger surface allows better cooling
around 90 ◦ C. of the blades, hence the passages are serpen-
tine in shape or have small fins on the internal
wall.

Figure 4: Convection cooling in turbine blade

Figure 3: GE F414, first ever gas-turbine with com-
posite blades.

With the introduction of composite materials,

Ceramic Matrix Composites (CMCs) were being ˆ Impingement Cooling: It is a modified ver-
used to manufacture the turbine blades. GE Avia- sion of convection cooling. A stream of cool air
tion demonstrated the application of such composite hits the inner surface of the turbine blade. The
blades in the F414 engines GaIn20 . These blades turbine blade is hollow and has a core through
were proven to withstand operating temperatures which the coolant air reaches inside the blade
around 90-150 deg C higher than Nickel superalloy (Fig.5). The cool air moves from the leading
blades. edge of the blade to the trailing edge. Since
Only development in materials was not sufficient a large surface area of the blade is covered it
to withstand the higher operating temperatures of results in an effective cooling.
the modern engines. Such high temperatures are
dealt with using cooling techniques which reduces
the harsh effect of high temperatures on the blades.

2 Air Cooling Methods

Generally, turbine blades are cooled by passing a
cooling fluid through/around it. The fluid absorbs
the heat from blades and cools them down. It is gen- Figure 5: Impingement cooling in turbine blade
erally practiced with air as the cooling fluid. Liquid
cooling techniques were extensively tested but never
introduced.
In comparison to air/gas, liquids have higher heat
transfer capacity and also allows evaporative cooling. 2.2 External Cooling
Thus, better cooling of blades than air. But using
liquid as a cooling fluid adds its own problems. The
chances of leakage of fluid in the turbine, increased ˆ Film Cooling: A widely used technique due
rate of corrosion and choking can lead to ultimate to its better cooling efficiency than convection
failure of the gas turbines. Thus, although they are and impingement cooling. The coolant air is
attractive but not used very commonly. pumped out of the blades through multiple
small holes. These air create a film over the
blade ultimately protecting the blade from high
2.1 Internal Cooling
temperature gas (Fig.6). The temperature of
ˆ Convection Cooling: One of the simplest the blade surface is almost near to that of the
methods of cooling the blades is to pass cool air coolant air with higher cooling efficiency.

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IIST, Thiruvanthapuram Cooling of Turbine Blade

metals are potentially a practical way to address the

challenges of traditional air cooling.Thus, he felt it
was necessary to study the heat transfer mechanism
of liquid metal used to cool the turbine vane in high
temperature gas turbines.
The coolant used in the study is gallium-indium
eutectic (GaIn20 ). The thermal conductivity of the
Figure 6: Film cooling in turbine blade alloy is about 45.5 times higher than that of water.
Its viscosity is close to water and has good fluidity.
The presence of indium with gallium helps in gaining
The cooling effectiveness depends on the type better cooling efficiency.
of coolant air, coolant flow, geometry of holes
used to push the coolant air, injection pattern
and injection angle.

ˆ Cooling Effusion: The blade material is

made of porous material which allows passage
of cool air through the surface. The effusion of
cool air through the surface causes the forma-
tion of a thin film/envelope which protects the
surface of the blade from main flow (Fig.7).
The effusion cooling method also allows uni-
form cooling of the surface.

Figure 8: Closed-loop cooling circuit used in the

liquid-metal cooling system. (Source:[3])

3.1 Mechanism of liquid cooling

Figure 7: Effusion cooling in turbine blade The liquid metal is pumped into the cooling chan-
nels of stator vanes for one or more stages, then goes
through the heat exchanger and finally returns to
3 Liquid Cooling Methods the pump. The liquid metal returning from vanes
exchanges the heat with air entering the compres-
Over the past decades, research was conducted to im- sor. With this closed-loop cooling circuit (Fig.8),
prove the air-cooling method by improving the cool- the system efficiency is increased.
ing structure and the different amounts and modes of
air intake. The turbine inlet temperature is increas-
ing at an average rate of 293 K, while the metal tem-
perature resistance only increases at a rate of about
281K every year [1]. Thus, the traditional cooling
technology is failing to meet the requirements of gas
turbines with high efficiency and high reliability [2].
In a recent study by Zhang, et. al [3], the pos-
sibility of use of Gallium Indium alloy (GaIn20 ) as
a turbine blade coolant was explored. The research
aimed to investigate the heat transfer effects of an in-
ternally liquid-cooled vane with a U-shaped channel
using numerical simulation.
The method of cooling using liquid metals for
the stator vanes in the gas turbines was proposed by
Brostmeyer et. al. [4]. Till now, a lot of researchers
were focused on the use of liquid metal cooling meth- Figure 9: Laterally averaged external ϕ for GaIn20
ods for electronic components [5]. Only a few inves- cooling and air cooling (Source:[3])
tigations focus on the application of liquid metals in
cooling turbine vanes. The authors feel that liquid

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IIST, Thiruvanthapuram Cooling of Turbine Blade

4 Results external cooling effectiveness (ϕ) for both of the cool-

ing methods and it evident that the cooling effective-
The overall cooling effectiveness (ϕ) defined using ness of GaIn20 cooling is significantly higher than air
equation (Eq.1) cooling.
T∞ − Tw θ is the dimensionless temperature and Fig.10
ϕ= (1) presents the value of θ at the vane midspan repre-
T∞ − Tc
sented by s/C. Here, s is the streamwise surface
Where T∞ is the temperature of the flow, Tw is
distance from stagnation and C is the arc length of
the temperature of the wall and Tc is the tempera-
vane from stagnation to the trailing edge. The ra-
ture of the coolant flow.
tio s/C is used to identify a location on vane in a
dimensionless fashion (Fig.11).
Fig.12 and Fig.13 are the contour distribution
of dimensionless temperature over the PS and SS sur-
face respectively. The plots were obtained through
numerical simulations.

Figure 10: Laterally averaged external θ for GaIn20

cooling and air cooling (Source:[3])

From the numerical simulations, it was obtained

that the value of ϕ was significantly higher than that
of air cooling as the heat transfer performance of Figure 11: Distribution of s/C along the vane. SS
GaIn20 cooling is much greater than that of air cool- stands for Suction Surface whereas PS stands for
ing. Fig.9 presents the value of laterally averaged Pressure Surface. (Source:[3])

Figure 12: Dimensionless Temperature distribution over the PS of the blade. (Source:[3])

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IIST, Thiruvanthapuram Cooling of Turbine Blade

Figure 13: Dimensionless Temperature distribution over the SS of the blade. (Source:[3])

5 Discussion 6 Conclusion
The cooling effectiveness (ϕ) for GaIn20 cooling is Although the metal liquid cooling was proved to be
almost constant for the range −0.75 < s/C < highly effective with respect to air cooling. The cool-
0.75 approximately in comparision to the air cooling ing approach of metal liquid is 167% higher than that
(Fig.9). This shows that a uniform cooling of the of air cooling. But the problems and issues related
surface is taking place using the liquid-metal cooling to the use of metal liquid cooling were not discussed,
technique although there is drop in the cooling ef- which hinders the determination of practicality and
fictiveness in the regions nearer to trailing edge. As useability of the idea.
the leading edge is far away from the internal cooling
channel and hence cannot be cooled well.
A similar increase in the values of θ is evident in
(Fig.10) for both GaIn20 cooling and air cooling at References
the regions nearer to trailing edge. Also, the values
of θ is significantly lower for GaIn20 which is also ev- [1] M Ni et al. “Review of aero-turbine blade cool-
ident in the contour plots of the blade (Fig.12, 13). ing technologies”. In: Gas Turbine Technol 18.4
GaIn20 as a coolant can greatly enhance the heat (2005), pp. 25–33.
transfer and the cooling approach is approximately
167% higher than that of air cooling. Although metal [2] Ronald S Bunker. “Evolution of turbine cool-
liquid cooling is proved to be very effective in terms ing”. In: Turbo Expo: Power for Land, Sea, and
of cooling effectiveness. Air. Vol. 50770. American Society of Mechanical
But the research by Zhang et. al. [3] missed dis- Engineers. 2017, V001T51A001.
cussion related to the following important aspects,
[3] Yifeng Zhang et al. “Numerical simulation of
ˆ Tackling leakage of liquid metal in the turbine convective heat transfer for an internally cooled
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chances of choking of cooling passages. John W Appleby. Gas turbine engine with liquid
metal cooling. May 2016.
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