On heat transfer and flow characteristics of jets impinging onto a concave surface with varying jet arrangements

The increase in hot gas temperature is helpful for the turbine efficiency improvement and energy-saving. The significantly curved leading edge suffers the highest thermal load in a turbine blade. Jet impingement is one of the popular heat transfer enhancement methods, which has been widely used in blade leading edge. In this study, the flow structure and heat transfer characteristics of jets impinging onto a curved surface with varying jet arrangements and Reynolds number (10,000–40,000) are numerically investigated. The relative jet-to-target spacing equals 1, and relative surface curvature equals 10. An array jets arrangement is provided as baseline. Concerning three array cases, jet holes are positioned in inline and staggered patterns with changing jet-to-jet spacing. In this work, streamlines of different sections, limiting streamlines near target wall and vortex, are obtained. Local Nusselt number contour, local Nusselt number curves and surface-averaged Nusselt number are also presented. Local heat transfer characteristics are analyzed with fluid flow. It is also shown that the heat transfer uniformity of both inline and staggered cases is significantly enhanced by comparing with an array jets case. The whole curved surface-averaged Nusselt number increases with increasing jet-to-jet streamwise spacing at inline arrangement.