Analysis of Airfoil Trailing Edge Heat Transfer and Its Significance in Thermal-Mechanical Design and Durability

The trailing edge section of modern high-pressure turbine airfoils is an area that requires a high degree of attention from turbine performance and durability standpoints. Aerodynamic loss near the trailing edge includes expansion waves, normal shocks and wake shedding. Thermal issues associated with trailing edge are also very complex and challenging. To maintain effective cooling ensuring metal temperature below design limit is particularly difficult, as it needs to be implemented in a relatively small area of the airfoil. To date little effort has been devoted to advancing the fundamental understanding of the thermal characteristics in airfoil trailing edge regions. Described in this paper are the procedures leading to closed-form, analytical solutions for temperature profile for four most representative trailing edge configurations. The configurations studied are: (1) solid wedge shape without discharge, (2) wedge with slot discharge, (3) wedge with discrete-hole discharge, and (4) wedge with pressure-side cutback slot discharge. Comparison among these four cases is made primarily in the context of airfoil metal temperature and resulting cooling effectiveness. Further discussed in the paper are the overall and detail design parameters for preferred trailing edge cooling configurations as they affect turbine airfoil performance and durability.