NASA C3X Conjugate Heat Transfer. Internally Cooled Turbine Vane — Run 157

For more than four decades, the internally cooled NASA C3X vane has been a defining benchmark for conjugate heat-transfer prediction. The case tests coupled aerodynamic and thermal prediction for an internally cooled turbine vane. Flow360 uses steady, fully turbulent k–ω SST RANS with independently prescribed coolant mass flow and temperature in all ten passages. The predicted wall-temperature and surface-pressure distributions follow the measurements, while the heat-transfer coefficient differs most near the leading edge, around S/arc ~ 0.1. The heat-transfer coefficient is strongly influenced by the developing boundary layer, neglecting its laminar-to-turbulent transition helps explain the differences between this fully turbulent prediction and the measurements.

Comparison of Flow360 predictions against reference data. Click an image to expand.

Normalized vane-wall temperature

Normalized surface heat-transfer coefficient

Surface static-to-total pressure ratio