Thermo Mechanical Analysis of the Gas Turbine Blade

Gas turbine engines are extensively used in aerospace and power generation plants. In the gas turbine engine, the turbine blade is one of the most vital components. It is subjected to very complex loading conditions at high temperature along with high centrifugal and pressure load. The performance and life of the gas turbine engine mostly depends on the gas turbine blades. In this study, a single crystal Ni-based superalloy (CMSX-4) is used as the material of a twisted gas turbine blade. Two different models of gas turbine blades have been created. One of those is uncooled blade and other is blade with cooling channels of constant cross-section along the span length. Both the models have been used for steady state CFD analysis to get temperature, pressure, and heat transfer coefficient distribution on the blade surface. From CFD results, transient heat transfer analysis was performed to get temperature distribution in the blade. The temperature distribution obtained from heat transfer analysis along with centrifugal and pressure load is considered for transient thermo-mechanical analysis of the blade. In transient thermo-mechanical analysis maximum stress for model 1 and model 2 is 399.2 MPa and 380.8 MPa respectively.