The heat transfer potential of compressor vanes on a hydrogen fueled turbofan engine

Journal article, 2024

Hydrogen is a promising fuel for future aviation due to its CO2-free combustion. In addition, its excellent cooling properties as it is heated from cryogenic conditions to the appropriate combustion temperatures provides a multitude of opportunities. This paper investigates the heat transfer potential of stator surfaces in a modern high-speed low-pressure compressor by incorporating cooling channels within the stator vane surfaces, where hydrogen is allowed to flow and cool the engine core air. Computational Fluid Dynamics simulations were carried out to assess the aerothermal performance of this cooled compressor and were compared to heat transfer correlations. A core air temperature drop of 9.5 K was observed for this cooling channel design while being relatively insensitive to the thermal conductivity of the vane and cooling channel wall thickness. The thermal resistance was dominated by the air-side convective heat transfer, and more surface area on the air-side would therefore be required in order to increase overall heat flow. While good agreement with established heat transfer correlations was found for both turbulent and transitional flow, the correlation for the transitional case yielded decent accuracy only as long as the flow remains attached, and while transition was dominated by the bypass mode. A system level analysis, indicated a limited but favorable impact at engine performance level, amounting to a specific fuel consumption improvement of up to 0.8 % in cruise and an estimated reduction of 3.6 % in cruise NOx. The results clearly show that, although it is possible to achieve high heat transfer rate per unit area in compressor vanes, the impact on cycle performance is constrained by the limited available wetted area in the low-pressure compressor.