On the heat transfer characteristics of a Lamilloy cooling structure with curvatures with different pin fins configurations

Purpose The pin fin is applied into a Lamilloy cooling structure which is broadly used in the leading edge region of the modern gas turbine vane. The purpose of this paper is to investigate effects of the layout, diameter and shape of pin fins on the flow structure and heat transfer characteristics in a newly improved Lamilloy structure at the leading edge region of a turbine vane. Design/methodology/approach A numerical method is applied to investigate effects of the layout, diameter and shape of pin fins on the flow structure and heat transfer characteristics in a newly improved Lamilloy structure at the leading edge of a turbine vane. The diverse locations of pin fins areLp= 0.35, 0.5, 0.65. The diameter of the pin fins varies from 8 mm to 32 mm. Three different ratios of root to roof diameter for pin fins are also investigated, i.e.k= 0.5, 1, 2. The Reynolds number ranges from 10,000 and 50,000. Results of the flow structures, heat transfer on the target surface and pin fin surfaces, and friction factor are studied. Findings The heat transfer on the pin fin surface gradually decreases and then increases as the location of the pin fins increases. Increasing the diameter of the pin fins causes the heat transfer on the pin fin surface to gradually increase, while a lower value of the friction factor occurs. Besides, the heat transfer on the pin fin surface at a small root diameter increases remarkably, but a slight heat transfer penalty is found at the target surface. It is also found that both the Reynolds analogy performance and the thermal performance are increased compared to the baseline whose diameter and normalized location of pin fins are set as 16 and 0.5 mm, respectively. Social implications The models provide a basic theoretical study to deal with nonuniformity of the temperature field for the turbine vane leading edge. The investigation also provides a better understanding of the heat transfer and flow characteristics in the leading edge region of a modern turbine vane. Originality/value This is a novel method to adopt pin fins into a Lamilloy cooling structure with curvature. It presents that the heat transfer of the pin fin surface in a pin-fin Lamilloy cooling structure with curvature can be significantly increased by changing the parameters of the pin fins which may lead to various flow behavior. In addition, the shape of the pin fin also shows great influence on the heat transfer and flow characteristics. However, the heat transfer of the target surface shows a small sensitivity to different layouts, diameter and shape of pin fin.