Propulsion and Power Research 2019;8(4):310e319

http://ppr.buaa.edu.cn/

Propulsion and Power Research

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ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Aero-thermal redesign of a high pressure turbine

nozzle guide vane
Hadi Yavaria, Ali Khavarib, Mohammad Alizadehc,*, Behrad Kashfid,
Hiwa Khaledia

a
School of Mechanical Engineering, Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran
b
Islamic Azad University, Science and Research Branch, Tehran, Iran
c
College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
d
K. N. Toosi University of Technology, Tehran, Iran

Received 20 May 2018; accepted 7 January 2019

Available online 9 December 2019

KEYWORDS Abstract The current article presents conceptual, preliminary and detailed aero-thermal rede-
sign of a typical high pressure turbine nozzle guide vane. Design targets are lower coolant con-
Vane count number;
Aero-thermal redesign; sumption, reduced manufacturing costs and improved durability. These goals are sought by
Cooling mass flow 25% reduction in vane count number and lower number of airfoils per segment. Design chal-
consumption; lenges such as higher airfoil loading, associate aerodynamic losses and higher thermal loads are
High pressure nozzle discussed. In order to maximize coolant flow reduction and avoid higher aerodynamic losses,
guide vane; airfoil Mach distribution is carefully controlled. There has been an effort to limit design
Turbine aerodynamics changes so that the proven design features of the original vane are used as much as possible.
Accordingly, the same cooling concept is used with minor modifications of the internal struc-
tures in order to achieve desired coolant flow and internal heat transfer distribution. Platforms
of the new design are quite similar to the original one except for cooling holes and application
of thermal barrier coating (TBC). Detailed aerodynamics/heat transfer simulations reveals that
the reduced trailing edge (T.E.) blockage and skin friction dominated the negative effect of
increased secondary losses. As a result the reduced design performs acceptable in terms of total
pressure loss and improving stage efficiency for a wide range of varying pressure ratio.

*Corresponding author.
E-mail address: mhmdalizadeh@ut.ac.ir (Mohammad Alizadeh).
Peer review under responsibility of Beihang University.

Production and Hosting by Elsevier on behalf of KeAi

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jppr.2019.01.012
2212-540X/ª 2019 Beihang University. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of KeAi. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND
license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Aero-thermal redesign of a high pressure turbine nozzle guide vane
Moreover, more than 20% cooling mass flow can be saved; while maximum and average metal
temperatures as well as cross sectional temperature gradients have not been changed much.
ª 2019 Beihang University. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of KeAi. This is an open
access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Nomenclature
Ca axial chord (unit: m)
x streamwise
theta blade to blade coordinate (radians)
M Mach number
Greek letters
a flow angle (unit: degree)
G loss coefficient
Subscripts
exit value at the vane outlet
1. Introduction
Cooling flow of a first stage high pressure turbine nozzle
guide vane (HPNGV) may account for up to 13% of core
flow in modern gas turbine engines [1]. This is of great
importance regarding the fact that 1% of cooling air is a loss
of approximately 1% specific fuel consumption [2]. There-
fore efficient utilization and control of turbine cooling flows
are essential for achieving high efficiency engine cycles and
minimizing combustor emissions.
Assuming a constant cooling effectiveness, coolant flow
can be decreased either by cooling technology improvement
or external heat load reduction. Application of superior
cooling technologies and coolant flow redistribution are the
primary approaches when it comes to an engine upgrade.
Taking the first blade of GE MS9001 as an example, simple
radial cooling channels in the original 9B machines were
equipped with orthogonal rib tabulators for the 9E versions
[3]. Recently, the radial configuration has been replaced by
multi-pass serpentine cooling channels in 9EMAX
machines.
Compared to cooling technology improvement, coolant
optimization by external heat load reduction has received
much less attention in the literature. The basic idea for the
latter approach is to decrease gas side wet area through
reducing number of blades and/or lessening the external
heat transfer coefficient. From an aerodynamic viewpoint;
lower airfoil count number implies higher blade loading and
consequently elevated diffusion losses. Although this could
be compensated for via enlarging airfoil chord; the subse-
quent effect would be a blade with lower aspect ratio. Thus
exacerbating the already high level of secondary losses in
311
turbine inlet guide vanes; reminding the fact that secondary
flows are a strong function of the aspect ratio. In airfoils of
low aspect ratio, the end-wall boundary layers occupy a
greater fraction of the blade passage, and the secondary
losses are correspondingly greater.
Saha et al. [4] compared aerodynamic characteristics of a
HPNGV with its new reduced version in a transonic annular
sector cascade. The investigated nozzle seems to be the 1st
stage vane of SGT800 gas turbine in which the reduced
version has 24% lower count number. They observed peak
suction to occur earlier and extension of the trailing edge
diffusion zone for the reduced vane case. This is probably
due to higher outlet metal angle; shifting throat location.
The loss produced per vane is reported to be significantly
higher; however, a comparison of mass averaged losses
showed similar spanwise loss distributions for both designs.
Gomes and Niehuis [5] examined aerodynamic performance
of a highly loaded gas turbine blade in a linear cascade. The
blade pitch was increased till that a strong separation occurs
on the suction side. They used air jet vortex generators to
create streamwise vortices prior to the separation. The ex-
periments showed that the vortex generators can help to
reduce flow separation and total pressure losses.
The change in aerodynamic loading has also profound
effects on metal temperature distribution. Different regions
of the airfoil withstand different external heat loads
depending on gas recovery temperature and heat transfer
coefficient. This is of great importance considering the fact
that component's operating life depends not only on tem-
perature value but also temperature gradients. Therefore,
cooling design should be carried out considering external
heat load distribution; so that metal temperature gradients
and resultant thermal induced stresses can be confined
within an acceptable limit.
Aero-thermal performance of a highly loaded transonic
turbine nozzle guide vane is reported by Arts and Lambert
[6]. The aim of the study was to investigate effects of
different main stream parameters on the airfoil external heat
load. Measurements were performed in a linear cascade
arrangement in which Mach and Reynolds numbers as well
as gas to wall temperature ratio were made similar to engine
condition. However, the maximum turbulence intensity was
far less than what can be seen in real engine conditions.
Consigny and Richards [7] reported the results of an
experimental study on the effect of Mach number, Reynolds
number, inlet flow angle, and free-stream turbulence level
on heat transfer rate to a gas turbine blade. Stagnation point,
laminar and transitional heating were reported to increase by
312
turbulence but turbulent heating is unaffected. They were
able to detect re-laminarization in regions of high favorable
pressure gradient, by following the change in heating rate.
Trailing edge heat load was found to be as high as the
leading edge (L.E.). Ragab and Gabry [8] reported conju-
gate heat transfer analysis for both a convectively cooled
airfoil and its new reduced version under cascade experi-
mental condition. In contrast to the base airfoil, the reduced
version was reported to benefit from film cooling technol-
ogy and no further design details were elaborated. They
validated their CFD models against the NASA C3X vanes,
one on the no film-cooled C3X vane and the other on the
film-cooled C3X vane.
Aside from airfoil count reduction, there is another
design strategy among some OEMs regarding HPNGVs.
Common practice in HPNGV manufacturing is to cast
multi-airfoil segments. Even though turbine performance
seems to take advantage of reduced leakage area, thermal
stress induced by thermal gradient across the sidewall/vane
interface is higher for such geometries. By decreasing
number of vanes per segment, structural redundancy and
thermal stresses reduce thus minimizing probability of crack
incidence [9]. Halving number of airfoils per segment
resulted in 66% lower filet crack incident for MS9001's first
HPNGV [10]. The original MS9001B had four vanes per
segment while the latest version has two vanes per segment.
The current article presents detailed aero-thermal rede-
sign of a typical high pressure turbine vane; hereafter called
original vane. Design intentions are to reduce required
coolant flow and improve durability through the reduction in
both airfoil count and number of airfoil per segment. There
has been an effort to limit design changes so that the proven
design features of the original vane are used as much as
possible. Design challenges such as higher airfoil loading,
associate aerodynamic losses and higher thermal loads are
discussed. In order to maximize coolant flow reduction and
avoid higher aerodynamic losses, airfoil Mach distribution
is carefully controlled. In addition to aerodynamic impli-
cations of an extended flow pass, increasing airfoil loading
usually results in higher external heat loads. Therefore,
design considerations have been taken into account in order
to avoid excessive heat transfer augmentation due to higher
airfoil loading.
2. Aerodynamic design
The profiling method used for the development of the
new airfoils is carried out automatically by the combination
of MATLAB tool boxes for numerical optimization,
ASNSYS-Bladegen for airfoil description and MISES as the
blade-to-blade solver. The general algorithm is quite similar
to a direct approach [11].
MISES describes B2B flow field by steady Euler equa-
tions and viscous effects are modeled by integral boundary
layer equations [12]. The solver is extended to include
quasi-three dimensional effects for stream surface radius and
streamtube thickness. Three different modes of
Hadi Yavari et al.
laminareturbulent transition are accounted for; depending
on free-stream turbulence level, Reynolds number, and
pressure distribution [13]. For validation purpose, the code
is applied to a highly loaded turbine airfoil that was
experimentally investigated by Kiock et al. [14]. As seen in
Table 1, predicted performance data are in good agreement
with the experimental values. A small bubble, based on zero
wall coefficients, and consequent transition onset is pre-
dicted at 0.95% of axial chord.
Total number of 20 independent design variables is used
to describe a complete airfoil using chamber-thickness
mode. Both chamber angle and thickness distributions are
formulated by fifth order Bezier curves in M prime-theta
coordinate. While L.E. is described by an elliptical function;
cooling slut necessitates cut-off definition for T.E. The
effectiveness and flexibility of the method is tested by
generating several high and low pressure turbine airfoils
including the original vane.
The goal of optimization is to minimize an objective
function (O.F.) with respect to geometric design variables.
Lower and upper bounds for each variable are defined in
order to meet design constraints and avoid physically
meaningless solutions. Airfoil maximum thicknesses, min-
imum L.E. diameter and minimum T.E. thickness are among
design constraints, so that the designed airfoils accommo-
date wall thickness, cooling slot and internal cooling insert.
Maximum axial chord is also limited since the new airfoil is
expected to be retrofitable into the current engine.
Optimization process starts with sparse sets of design
parameters (i.e. DoE) and related objective function values
as an initial database. An Artificial Neural Network (ANN)
is trained by the database then optimization is performed by
coupling Genetic Algorithm (GA) and the ANN. Once the
GA is converged, the objective function is evaluated for the
resultant airfoil using MISES. This new data is added to
database and the whole process is repeated (Figure 1).
One of the major design constraints was to use the
proven cooling concept of the original vane and avoid
higher manufacturing cost and design risks related to su-
perior cooling technologies. However, reduction in airfoil
count inevitably increases aerodynamic loading, which in
many cases ends with higher thermal loads. Therefore,
higher coolant consumption (per airfoil) would be necessary
if the same cooling technology is to be applied. In order to
meet the aforementioned constraint and simultaneously
achieve maximum coolant reduction, the O.F. was modified
in an attempt to control surface Mach number distribution.
For this purpose surface Mach distribution was parameter-
ized based on maximum Mach number and acceleration/
Table 1 RG cascade data [14] compared to MISES predictions.
Mexit G aexit
Experiment 0.933  0.006 0.046  0.007 67.03  0.15
MISES 0.918 0.045 67.03
Aero-thermal redesign of a high pressure turbine nozzle guide vane
Figure 1 General design procedure.
deceleration rates in different part of the airfoil. Apart from
thermal aspects, it is well known that controlling airfoil
loading is an effective method to restrain cascade losses [4].
3. Thermal design
Figure 2 shows fluorescent penetrant inspection (FPI)
performed on original nozzle segment after 20k equivalent
operating hours (EOH). The picture features two internally
cooled airfoils per segment in which a major crack is
detected at the inner side-wall/suction side intersection. The
vanes are expected to operate for another 20k EOH; how-
ever, the crack location makes welding repair very difficult.
The incidence is reported for all engines operated in several
specific sites where root cause analysis (RCA) specified
thermo-mechanical fatigue (TMF) as the deriving mecha-
nism. Further life analysis suggests that by reducing number
of airfoils per segment, the amplitude of thermal stress and
resulting probability of crack initiation is substantially
improved.
Figure 2 Major crack on the fillet area of the original vanes after
20k EOH.
313
The original vane benefits from a typical impingement/no
film cooling layout, a cooling arrangement suitable for
moderate turbine inlet temperatures. Cooling is supplied via
an insert, impinges on internal side of L.E. though three
staggered rows of holes and then flows over axial ribs
(extended surfaces) on both pressure and suction sides.
Suction and pressure side flows are united before exiting at
the vane T.E.; where inline pedestals are used. As it will be
shown later, careful control of surface Mach number has
successfully avoided notable increase in external heat
transfer coefficient (HTC). This allowed designer to use the
proven design features of the original airfoil, lower the
design risks and circumvent higher manufacturing costs
associated with film cooling technology.
Once cooling general layout is specified, detailed di-
mensions are optimized using TurboCool, an in-house
design tool. TurboCool comprises preliminary and quasi-
3D design levels, both simulating cooling flow by one
dimensional network approach [15]. In the later, cooling
channels are considered as a network of different elements,
which linked together by the internal nodes. In each
element, the simulation is performed by integrating the one
dimensional compressible continuity, momentum, and en-
ergy equations along a defined flow path. Empirical corre-
lations are used to predict friction factor and heat transfer
coefficients for various cooling technologies.
As depicted by Figure 3, in preliminary design level each
internal cooling element is connected to a panel in which
heat flux is evaluated based upon one dimensional resistance
calculation [16]. Panels are modeled with gas recovery
temperature and coating and metal thickness as shown in
Figure 3. This design approach is implemented for 20%,
50% and 80% of blade span. Preliminary level optimization
target is to minimize cooling flow and temperature gradient
in each panel, while limiting solid temperature to a specified
maximum allowable value.
Solid temperatures predicted in preliminary level are
subjected to considerable errors in regions (e.g. L.E.) where
heat conduction in chordwise/spanwise directions are not
negligible. Therefore selected designs from this phase are
passed to quasi-3D level for more accurate prediction and
necessary design improvements. Quasi-3D approach uses
the conjugate heat transfer (CHT) analysis method presented
by Alizadeh et al. [17]. Solid conduction is solved using
ANSYS Steady State Thermal, which iterates B.Cs with
network coolant solver in the form of coolant temperature,
internal HTC and coolant side wall temperature. To make
their approach suitable for design, complicated internal ge-
ometry is replaced by a simple solid airfoil shell. Moreover
external flow is accounted for by surface distributions of gas
recovery temperature and external HTC.
Platforms of the original vanes are primarily cooled by
the leakage slot flow at the combustor-turbine interface
known as Combustor Film-Cooling Carryover (CFCC).
There are also five film cooling holes placed at the inner
platform. With the introduction of the new highly loaded
airfoils, stronger B2B pressure gradients are expected to
314
Figure 3 Schematic representation of preliminary design network.
weaken the effectiveness of CFCC and enlarge the uncooled
region on platforms known as bow wake [18]. This issue is
handled by the application of 0.45 mm TBC on the plat-
forms. The resultant reduction in thermal load was found to
be considerable, providing the opportunity to save more
cooling by reducing CFCC flow. It should be noted the TBC
thickness reduces gas pass height by 0.9 mm which in turn
decreases stage swallowing capacity. This issue has been
taken into account by small adjustment of outlet flow angle
in re-profiling phase. In other words the swallowing ca-
pacity of the new airfoil with reduced gas pass height equals
the one for the original vane.
4. CFD analysis
As the final step in numerical design process, high fi-
delity full CFD simulations are performed for both original
and new vane. The internal coolant, solid and the external
fluid are solved simultaneously in ANSYS CFX. Also
included in simulation are platform cavities, CFCC flow,
platform film holes, rim-seal purge flow and downstream
blade row. Referring to Figure 4, inlet boundary for the
CFCC is modeled far upstream so that non-uniformity of the
flow injection, at the combustor-vane interface, would be
more realistic. Temperature dependency of the fluid's ther-
mal conductivity and dynamic viscosity is addressed by
Sutherland formula. K-u SST turbulence model is used and
viscous work terms are computed in energy equation. Sur-
face roughness is considered in the form of sand grain
roughness (SGR) and external and internal coatings are
accounted for by thin material model. Contrary to the
Hadi Yavari et al.
aerodynamic design step; external boundary layer is
assumed fully turbulent in the CHT analysis. This is due to
the fact that combustor outlet flow is characterized by tur-
bulence intensities as high as 20% and turbulent viscosity
ratios up to 1.5  104. Consequently turbulent boundary is
dominant over the vane surface. Predicting the location of
transition onset involves many uncertainties and neglecting
laminar portion of the boundary layer is considered con-
servative from life prediction point of view.
Boundary conditions are two dimensional turbine inlet
total temperature/pressure, turbulence intensity/viscosity
ratio, stage outlet static pressure, coolant inlet total pressure/
temperature, blade rotational speed, mass flow and total
temperature of sealing and purge flows.
For validation purpose, predicted surface temperature of the
original vane is compared to the color patterns on a vane
operated for 20k EOH (Figure 5). Here the lower metal tem-
peratures are noticed by darker surface color and vice versa. As
seen temperature contour matches well to the color pattern.
Specifically a relatively cold region is detected on the fillet area
of the suction side near sidewalls. This is due to low gas tem-
perature resulted from cold flow of CFCC merged in passage
vortex and brought to contact with the surface.
The accuracy of thermal design/analysis approach can be
further examined in Ref. [17] where surface temperature of C3X
vane has been predicted and compared to experimental data.
5. Results and discussion
The original and reduced airfoils are compared in
Figure 6. As expected the airfoil true chord and outlet metal
Aero-thermal redesign of a high pressure turbine nozzle guide vane
Figure 4 Full CFD computational domains.
angle have noticeably increased in response to extended gas
pass. T.E. thickness and axial chord are kept the same due to
cooling requirements and the need for the reduced airfoil to
be retrofitable.
Performances of the original and reduced vanes are
compared in Figure 7 in terms of aerodynamic loadings at
different span heights. The corresponding span heights are
defined based on surface streamlines; therefore, the radius
along each span is variable from inlet to outlet. The isen-
tropic Mach number distribution for each span height is
calculated based on local static pressure and the span's
associated inlet total pressure value.
As can be noticed maximum Mach number values as
well as associated downstream deceleration rates are quite
Figure 5 Original vane after 20k EOH and temperature contours
from CFD simulation.
315
similar for both designs. This is in agreement with the
design purpose to avoid excessive transonic shock losses.
Moreover, a considerable portion of the required growth in
loading is accommodated via lowering Mach number on the
pressure side (P.S.). This is of great importance since it al-
lows the rise in suction side (S.S.). Mach numbers (and so
HTCs) to become somehow limited. As an inevitable
consequence of decreased Mach number (higher pressure
levels) on P.S., one can see the considerably higher accel-
eration rates which may encourage boundary layer re-
laminarization for x/Ca>0.8.
Referring to Figure 7, tip region is more prone to flow
separation due to the sharp expansion (0.6<x/Ca<0.7). This
is followed by a region of relatively constant Mach number
(0.8<x/Ca) which may be interpreted as boundary layer
separation. For further investigation, S.S. surface stream-
lines were scrutinized and as shown in Figure 8 no clear
sign of separation is found.
Design point exit flow angle distributions are presented
in Figure 9. The reduced version average exit flow angle is
0.7 less than that of the original vane. Considering higher
metal angles (Figure 6), lower exit angle can be interpreted
as higher deviation and probably higher profile losses for the
reduced design.
Total pressure loss is a combination of T.E. blockage and
secondary and profile losses. The latter includes skin friction
and diffusion loss. Considering the increased loadings in
Figure 7, secondary flow losses are expected to be higher for
the reduced vanes. Increased deviation also has a negative
effect on profile loss. However, T.E. blockage and skin
friction has reduced for the new design due to the lower
count number. Figure 10 depicts spanwise distributions of
loss coefficient, implying that the reduced design performs
better in term of total pressure loss. Therefore, it can be
concluded that, for the current case, the share of reduced
T.E. blockage and skin friction are more important
compared to the increased diffusion and secondary losses.
Total pressure loss is not the only factor affecting aero-
dynamic performance. The vane exit flow uniformity and
downstream blade row incidence are also important. Stage
isentropic efficiency is probably the best parameter which
reflects the combine outcome of those effects. In this
respect, uncooled stage efficiency is evaluated numerically
and the result is shown in Figure 11. Although the difference
is small, the reduced design provides higher isentropic ef-
ficiency for a wide range of stage pressure ratio. The pre-
sented trend is important when considering off-design
conditions.
As discussed earlier, one of the major design consider-
ations is the change in external heat load due to the
increased airfoil loading. In this respect the distribution of
the external HTC is investigated as a measure of external
heat load. Moreover, analyzing the distribution of the
external HTC gives useful information on the state of the
boundary layer.
Figure 12 depicts the pitch-line distribution of external
HTC for the design outlet Mach number. The reference
316 Hadi Yavari et al.

Figure 6 Comparison between the original vane and the reduced

mid profiles.

temperature defining the HTC is considered to be the gas

total inlet temperature, instead of local gas recovery tem-
perature. It can be shown that the induced error is less than
2%. As expected, the HTC quickly starts to fall from stag-
nation points on either sides of the airfoil, indicating the
laminar portion of the boundary layer. In this share of the
boundary layer, the reduced design experiences no increase
in HTC. For both designs, S.S. boundary layer transition
occurs immediately downstream of the stagnation point (x/
Caz0.04), due to the high level of combustor outlet tur-
bulence. The abrupt increase of HTC at this location sig-
nifies by-pass boundary layer transition. In contrast to the
laminar section, the reduced vane shows slightly (less than
3%) higher HTCs during S.S. transition. However, the
opposite trend can be noticed further downstream. This is
related to the fully turbulent portion of the boundary,
identified by the fall in HTC for x/Ca>0.3.
The laminar portion of the P.S. boundary layer is more
extended compared to the S.S. Downstream of the laminar
zone; the P.S. boundary layer seems to remains in transi-
tional state. Both vanes have comparable P.S. HTCs for
0 < x/Ca<0.2. Afterwards the HTC starts to increase for the
original vane indicating the onset of boundary layer transi-
tion. In contrast, the fall in HTC continues for the reduced
design until x/Ca<0.3 signifying extended laminar state.
The shift seems to help the new profile to keep the lower
level of P.S. HTC (up to 20%) till the T.E.
The distributions of HTC for the span heights of 20% and
80% are depicted in Figure 13 and Figure 14, respectively.
As seen the trends are more or less similar to the one
observed in the mid-span. The local heat load augmentation
on the S.S. transition zone is the lowest for 20% span height
and the highest for 80%. The behavior is probably due to the Figure 7 Loading distribution for the original vane and the reduced
relative change in maximum Mach number, which is version.
Aero-thermal redesign of a high pressure turbine nozzle guide vane 317

Figure 8 S.S. streamlines at the outlet design Mach number for the Figure 10 Pitch-averaged loss coefficient at the outlet design Mach
reduced vane. number.

flow of the pressure side is kept the same as the original

vane. These rearrangements are accomplished by resizing
impingement holes, location and spacing. Axial ribs and
trailing edge pedestals are also modified to achieve desired
coolant flow and internal heat transfer distribution. Based on
the new coolant geometry, total coolant flow consumption
per airfoil has slightly increased for the reduced design.
However, due to the lower airfoil count and at the same time
lower average external HTC, introduction of the new profile
has resulted in 22% lower coolant consumption. Generally
speaking the reduced vane experiences lower metal tem-
perature which is somehow expected according to the heat
load distributions discussed earlier.

Figure 9 Pitch-averaged exit flow angle at the design Mach number.

negative for the 20% span and positive for the 80%.
Nevertheless the local maximum HTC growth is still less
than 4%.
According to the above discussion, it can be concluded
that the method used in the preliminary design step has
successfully confined the increase in external heat load
when reducing the airfoil count. Therefore, the designer is
allowed to apply the same cooling concept and at the same
time achieves considerable coolant flow reduction. Using
the described thermal design procedure, slight modifications
of the internal structure are found necessary, so that higher
internal HTCs can be achieved for the regions of interest. In
this respect the new cooling system delivers more cooling Figure 11 Uncooled stage efficiency at the design nondimensional
flow to the S.S. compared to the base vane. The cooling speed.
318
Figure 12 Pitch line distribution of external HTC at the outlet
design Mach number.
6. Conclusion
Count number reduction of a typical HPNGV is per-
formed to reduce required coolant flow, manufacturing costs
and improve durability. Airfoil Mach distribution is metic-
ulously controlled to realize maximum cooling mass flow
reduction and avoid greater aerodynamic losses. These have
been accomplished by limiting the maximum Mach number
and lowering P.S. Mach number to accommodate most of
the increased loading; thereby avoiding excessive S.S. ve-
locity increase and the resultant growth in thermal loads and
diffusion losses. The reduced design was found to have
lower pressure loss coefficient, contracting the increased
secondary losses. Comparison of uncooled stage efficiencies
showed that, despite extended gas pass, the new design
provides slightly improved performance for a wide range of
Figure 13 Distribution of the external HTC for 20% span height.
Hadi Yavari et al.
Figure 14 Distribution of the external HTC for 80% span height.
stage pressure ratio. The laminar portion of the P.S.
boundary layer is considerably extended relative to that of
the original design providing the new airfoil with lower heat
loads. The S.S. heat load witnessed slight increase only in
the transitional zone which found acceptable within the
design targets. Accordingly the proven cooling concept of
the base design has been applied on the reduced vane count.
Some modifications have been made to increase internal
HTCs for the regions of interest. Compared to the base
design, 22% lower coolant consumption has been achieved.
In addition, the reduced vane experiences lower metal
temperature except a small region on the S.S. which, ac-
cording to failure criteria, is acceptable.
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