Faster and more realisitic simulation of cooled turbines
July 23, 2025 | TRACE Update
Faster and more realisitic simulation of cooled turbines
With this update, TRACE offers a powerful platform for the unsteady design of cooled turbine stages.
The unsteady simulation of cooled turbines
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The unsteady simulation of cooled turbines
With this update, TRACE offers a powerful platform for the unsteady design of cooled turbine stages.
The unsteady simulation of cooled turbines has traditionally been extremely computationally intensive – especially when resolving each individual film cooling hole. With the latest extension of our flow solver TRACE, we've achieved a major step forward: realistic predictions at a significantly reduced computational cost.
At the core of this innovation is a combination of three components:
Harmonic Balance enables efficient unsteady simulations – with a speed-up of several orders of magnitude compared to URANS.
A new, robust film cooling model replaces costly full resolution of individual holes.
Advanced anisotropic turbulence (e.g., SSG/LRR-ω) and heat transfer models improve the representation of mixing and diffusion processes.
The result:
Realistic predictions of adiabatic wall and material temperatures – with design-relevant temperature differences in critical areas.
Significantly simplified mesh generation
Parallel evaluation of multiple cooling concepts using a single mesh
Major reduction in computing time: from an estimated 68 million CPU hours to just 1294 CPU hours with TRACE + HB + film cooling model
With this update, TRACE offers a powerful platform for the unsteady design of cooled turbine stages: scientifically sound, efficient, and industry-oriented.
