Heat Transfer and Pressure Drop in Pin-Fin Trapezoidal Ducts

Abstract

Experiments are conducted to determine the log-mean averaged Nusselt number and overall pressure-drop coefficient in a pin-fin trapezoidal duct that models the cooling passages in modern gas turbine blades. The effects of pin arrangement (in-line and staggered), flow Reynolds number (6,000 ≦ Re ≦ 40,000) and ratio of lateral-to-total flow rate (0 ≦ ε ≦ 1.0) are examined. The results of smooth trapezoidal ducts without pin arrays are also obtained for comparison. It is found that, for the single-outlet-flow duct, the log-mean averaged Nusselt number in the pin-fin trapezoidal duct with lateral outlet is insensitive to the pin arrangement, which is higher than that in straight-outlet-flow duct with the corresponding pin array. As for the trapezoidal ducts having both outlets, the log-mean averaged Nusselt number has a local minimum value at about ε = 0.3. After about ε ≧ 0.8, the log-mean averaged Nusselt number is nearly independent of the pin configuration. Moreover, the staggered pin array pays more pressure-drop penalty as compared with the in-line pin array in the straight-outlet-flow duct; however, in the lateral-outlet-flow duct, the in-line and staggered pin arrays yield almost the same overall pressure drop.