Thermal analysis of gas turbine disk integrated with rotating heat pipes

The combination of the rotating heat pipe with conventional air cooling technique can be considered as an emerging and effective cooling technique for gas turbine disk. Accordingly, the thermal steady and transient analysis of a simplified turbine disk integrated with heat pipes have been numerically investigated. The steady and transient temperature variations in the presence and absence of heat pipes were investigated for various parameter, such as the thermal conductivity of the disk, the convective heat transfer coefficient for both the air and heat pipes, the dimension of the disk, and the number of heat pipes. The thermal analysis were performed by using finite element (FE) modeling software ANSYS-17.2. The extensive numerical simulations showed that when the number of heat pipes equal to 32, the maximum temperatures at the disk edge can be decreased by more than 100 degree. Additionally, increasing the convective heat transfer coefficient of the working fluid inside the heat pipes up to 10,000 W/m2.°C, the maximum temperature at the disk rim can further be reduced by more than 280 degree. It has also been observed that the time required to achieve the minimum steady-state temperature was more sensitive to the air convective heat transfer coefficient.