Numerical Heat Transfer Analysis of NACA Pin-Fin Thickness

Energy efficiency and performance are priorities for modern gas turbine engines. The increasing demand for energy efficiency and higher performance has driven the development of cooling technologies within gas turbine engines. This new demand has increased the constraints for performance on cooling technology within the hot section of gas-turbine engines. Pin-fin arrays are an important component of cooling technology within gas turbine blades. NACA airfoil-shaped pin-fins have been shown to have a high thermal performance balancing the need for heat transfer performance and low-pressure ratios. To find an efficient pin-fin shape to increase the heat transfer characteristics and lower flow resistance, several rectangular channels with NACA airfoil pin-fin shapes in a staggered array were numerically tested and compared using ANSYS Fluent 22.2. The NACA pin-fin shape was tested with varying diameter. Channel Reynolds number will be varied from 10000 to 15000, and 20000. The spanwise spacing ratio (S/D) was maintained at a constant value of 3. The initial streamwise spacing (X/D) was also set to a value of 4 while the streamwise spacing (X/Lpin) was set to 1.333. The width and length of the rectangular channel were also normalized with the diameter and total length of the NACA pin-fin. The width of the channel (W/D) varies with the thickness (D) of the NACA pin-fin. The length of the channel (Ltest/Ltotal) also varies with the total length of the pin-fin (Ltotal). Results show significant improvement with larger diameter airfoil shapes for heat transfer but also increased overall pressure drop in the channel.