Heat Pipe Combustor Cooling

The general approach which has been taken toward cooling aircraft turbine combustor liners is to utilize a portion of incoming combustor air for film-cooling. In this paper an alternate cooling method is considered, which is referred to as Heat Pipe Combustor Cooling. The conventional film-cooled combustor liner is replaced by a thin, metallic heat pipe liner. Incident heat is transported upstream, and then into to an adjacent compressor discharge air stream. After first acting as a heat sink to cool the liner, the compressor discharge air stream enters the combustor and serves as a supplementary combustion air supply/combustion gas diluent. This dual-use capability effectively doubles the available air supply for liner cooling, extending the turbine inlet temperature range for which metallic construction of the combustor liner is feasible.