Investigation of the Heat Transfer Characteristics

In the present study a numerical investigation of the heat transfer in an annular combustion chamber of a typical industrial gas turbine was done using a Galerkin-based finite-element solution of the problem. Results were obtained for three basic cases: constant flux incident on the entire combustion segment, constant flux in three quadrants of the chamber and a different magnitude constant flux in the other quadrant, and different magnitude fluxes on the upstream and downstream portions of the chamber. The chamber Biot numbers, dimensionless heat flux, and dimensionless structural wall and thermal barrier coating thicknesses were found to have a crucial effect on the chamber temperature distribution. It was shown that changing the magnitude of the heat flux in a single quadrant prominently alters the temperatures throughout the wall in this area, leading to exceedingly steep temperature gradients. It was also found that any step decrease in downstream incident flux leads to a sharp drop in temperatures at the interface of the thermal barrier coating and the combustion gases.