1. Introduction
Modern gas turbines are designed to allow for turbine inlet
temperatures that exceed allowable material temperatures in
order to improve turbine performance and power output. High
temperature combustion gas and complex flow phenomena near
the blade aggravate the heat transfer problem of the gas turbine
blade. As such, various cooling techniques have been applied to
blade cooling designs. Fig. 1 shows commonly used internal cooling
techniques for a gas turbine blade. Impingement cooling, rib
turbulated cooling, dimple cooling, and pin-fin cooling techniques
have been widely applied to gas turbine cooling designs, and many
studies have been conducted in order to improve the heat transfer
performance of those techniques [1].
Some researchers have proposed new concepts with respect to
internal cooling techniques for the blade trailing edge. For example,
Moon and Lau [3] investigated the pressure drop and heat
transfer on a rectangular duct with two perforated blockage configurations.
They showed that the number of walls and the configuration
of holes did not significantly affect the heat transfer
augmentation level. Lau et al. [4] investigated the heat transfer
for the flow moving through blockages with holes in an internal
cooling passage near the trailing edge region by using naphthalene
sublimation. They studied the effects of inlet and exit geometry
configurations and showed that the effects of the entrance channel
and exit slot geometries were not significant to the average heat
(mass) transfer or the distribution of the local heat (mass) transfer.
Saha et al. [5] looked at the heat transfer and friction factor of a
converging matrix structure with orthogonal ribs representing a
gas turbine blade trailing-edge cooling passage. They showed that
the matrix structure could result in an averaged Nusselt number
enhancement factor of 3–4. Armellini et al. [6] and Coletti et al.
[7] conducted experimental and numerical investigations of a
trapezoidal cross-section model simulating a trailing edge cooling
cavity with one rib-roughened wall and crossing jets. The interaction
between the jets and ribs increased the heat transfer coeffi-
cient on both the bottom and upper wall. Shin and Kwak [8]
measured the heat transfer coefficient in a turbine blade internal
cooling passage model with five types of blockages. They showed
that staggered impingement jets increased the heat transfer. However,
the pressure drop also increased greatly. They concluded that
the thermal performance for the perforated blockage could be
improved by optimizing the hole shape. Kan et al. [9] investigated
the combined effects between perforated blockages and pin fins in
a cooling passage. Six different blockage configurations were investigated
using both experimental and numerical methods. They
showed that the hole-to-channel area ratio is the most important
factor for heat transfer enhancement. Smaller area ratio cases
showed larger heat transfer enhancements and larger pressure