The objective of this study is to investigate a heat transfer phenomenon in a straight ribroughened duct which represents a cooling passage of a modern gas turbine blade. Experiments were performed for ribs mounted perpendicularly to the main flow direction on two opposite sides of the duct for the following cases: (1) with no gaps, (2) with gaps=0.33h and (3) with gaps =1h between the side walls and ribs (where h is the rib height). The heat transfer results revealed significant differences among these three cases, showing that the existence of gaps increases the heat transfer. Particularly, the local heat transfer on the wall between the consecutive ribs is higher in the near-side wall region than in the central region. To shed some light on this phenomenon, flow visualization was conducted using the particle tracer method. The flow visualization results revealed the effect of gaps on the three-dimensional flow structure between the ribs. It was concluded that this structure caused the heat transfer enhancement in the near-side wall region.
