THERMAL AND STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF A COOLED TURBINE BLADE USING ANSYS

Abstract

Gas turbine blades operate under extremely high temperatures that exceed allowable
metal limits. Effective internal cooling is therefore essential to maintain structural
integrity and prolong service life. This study presents a coupled steady-state thermal and
static structural analysis of a turbine blade incorporating ten internal cooling passages.
A reduced-order modeling approach is implemented in ANSYS Workbench, where
three-dimensional solid elements represent the blade and one-dimensional fluid
elements simulate coolant flow.
The thermal analysis evaluates temperature distribution in both solid and coolant
domains, while the structural analysis determines thermally induced stresses resulting
from constrained expansion. Results show significant temperature gradients between
the hot external surface (568 K) and cooled internal regions (minimum 338 K). The
maximum von Mises stress reaches 2.79 × 10⁹ Pa near critical cooling passages. The
study demonstrates that reduced-order thermal-fluid modeling provides computational
efficiency while maintaining physical accuracy for preliminary design evaluation.