Thermal Power and Fluid Engineering
Example dissertation project
Conjugate heat transfer in simplified turbine blades.
Supervisors Prof H Iacovides and Mr D Cooper
Experimental investigation of the temperature variation within a cooled turbine blade.
Gas turbine blades are internally cooled by pumping cooling air through internal cooling passages. This inevitably leads to temperature variations within the blade material. A large-scale model of a simplified turbine blade will be placed in a wind tunnel, with relatively cool air flowing around the blade and hot water pumped though passages inside it. A set of temperature measurements within and also over the surface of the blade will generate data on the temperature variation within the blade material for a range of operating conditions.
The objective of this project is to carry out an experimental investigation
of this phenomenon, this will include a spectral frequency analysis
of the data to establish if there is any specific frequency component
present (<10Hz) due to the turbulent fluid flow within the cooling passages.