Convective heat transfer on an inlet guide vane

Area of Science:

• Aerodynamics
• Heat Transfer
• Turbomachinery

Background:

• Inlet guide vanes are critical components in turbomachinery.
• Accurate prediction of flow and thermal fields is essential for performance and durability.
• Existing models require validation against experimental data.

Purpose of the Study:

• To numerically determine flow and temperature fields around an inlet guide vane.
• To analyze the impact of different thermal boundary conditions on vane performance.
• To compare computational fluid dynamics (CFD) results with experimental data.

Main Methods:

• Employed a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) approach.
• Solved governing equations using a finite-volume method.
• Implemented the low Reynolds number k-omega turbulence model (Wilcox).

Main Results:

• Presented outer surface temperatures, heat transfer coefficients, and static pressure distributions.
• Evaluated three distinct thermal boundary conditions on the vane.
• Observed best agreement with experimental data using a conjugate heat transfer (CHT) approach.

Conclusions:

• The conjugate heat transfer (CHT) approach provides superior accuracy for modeling vane thermal behavior.
• CHT is recommended for future research on film cooling in guide vanes and turbine blades.
• Numerical simulations are valuable for understanding complex aerodynamic and thermal phenomena.