Air is considered as the feasible internal coolant to cool the vane of the gas turbines for the conventional cooling method all the time. However, the traditional cooling method gradually is difficult to meet the demand of increasing inlet temperature for the high-pressure turbine. Because of the excellent heat transfer performance of liquid metal, the scheme of liquid metal cooling gas turbine is put forward. In this study, numerical simulation is performed to investigate the heat transfer effects of an internally cooled vane with a U-shaped channel. Empirical formulas are employed to calculate the variable physical properties of the liquid metal. The nondimensional surface temperatures are representative of the first stage of the gas turbine. A comparison of heat transfer between the air and liquid metal coolant is presented. Results showed that the liquid metal shows more excellent heat transfer performance compared to air and the overall effectiveness values of GaIn₂₀ cooling are approximately 366% higher than that of air cooling at Re = 50,000. Additionally, the enhancing rate of the heat transfer coefficients of GaIn₂₀ cooling is much less than that of air cooling at Re > 50,000. For the same mass flow rate, the decreasing rate of the heat transfer coefficient for GaIn₂₀ cooling is greater than that of air cooling with the increase of internal coolant inlet temperature. However, the pressure loss coefficient of air increases while the pressure loss coefficient of GaIn₂₀ is almost constant with an increase in the inlet temperature of the internal coolant.

对于传统的冷却方法，空气一直被认为是一种可行的内部冷却剂来冷却燃气轮机的叶片。然而，传统的冷却方式逐渐难以满足高压汽轮机进口温度升高的需求。由于液态金属具有优良的传热性能，提出了液态金属冷却燃气轮机的方案。在这项研究中，进行了数值模拟以研究具有 U 形通道的内部冷却叶片的传热效果。使用经验公式来计算液态金属的可变物理特性。无量纲表面温度代表燃气轮机的第一级。介绍了空气和液态金属冷却剂之间的传热比较。在Re  = 50,000 时，₂₀冷却比空气冷却高约 366% 。此外，在Re  > 50,000 时，GaIn ₂₀冷却的传热系数提高率远小于空冷。在相同质量流量下，随着内冷入口温度的升高，GaIn ₂₀冷却传热系数的下降幅度大于空冷。然而，空气的压力损失系数增加，而GaIn ₂₀的压力损失系数随着内部冷却剂入口温度的增加而几乎恒定。