A Numerical Analysis of Gas Turbine Disks Incorporating Rotating Heat Pipes

Abstract

Radially rotating heat pipes have been proposed for cooling gas turbine disks working at high temperatures. A disk incorporating the heat pipe would have an enhanced thermal dissipation capacity and a much lower temperature at the disk rim and dovetail surface. In this paper, extensive numerical simulations have been made for heat-pipe-cooled disks. Thermal performances are compared for the disks with and without incorporating the heat pipe at different heating and cooling conditions. The numerical results presented in this paper indicate that radially rotating heat pipes can significantly reduce the maximum and average temperatures at the disk rim and dovetail surface under a high heat flux working condition. In general, the maximum and average temperatures at the disk rim and dovetail surface could be reduced by above 250 and 150 degrees, respectively, compared to those of the disk without the heat pipe. As a result, a disk incorporating radially rotating heat pipes could alleviate temperature-related problems and allow a gas turbine to work at a much higher temperature.