Numerical investigation of the influence of incidence angle on asymmetrical turbine blade model showerhead film cooling effectiveness

The influence of various incidence angles on film cooling effectiveness of an axial turbine blade cascade with leading edge ejection from two rows of cooling holes is numerically investigated. The rows are located in the vicinity of the stagnation line. One row is located on the suction side and the other one is on the pressure side. The predicted pressure field for various blowing ratios (M = 0.7, 1.1 and 1.5) is compared with available experimental results at the design condition. Moreover, the effect of various incidence angles (?10°, ?5°, 0°, 5° and 10°) at three blowing rates is investigated by analyzing the results of both laterally averaged and area averaged values of adiabatic film cooling effectiveness. Numerical results indicate that the incidence angle can strongly affect the thermal protection of the blade at low blowing ratio but becomes less dominant at high blowing ratio. In fact, for the low blowing ratio, a small change in the incidence angle that relates to the design condition can deeply affect the thermal protection of the blade, which is evident from the laterally and area averaged film cooling effectiveness distributions.     

Experimental study of rotation effect on film cooling over the flat wall with a single hole

A new rotating test rig was set up to investigate the rotation effect on the film cooling over the flat wall. A simple flat blade with an inclined 30° film hole, which is parallel to the hot mainstream, was installed. And different rotation orientations were selected to simulate the blade pressure or suction side of a turbine blade. A steady liquid crystal technique was applied to obtain detailed distribution of the temperature over the blade surface. And the average adiabatic film cooling effectiveness of the area adjacent to the film hole was selected to evaluate the cooling effect. Five different rotational speeds, i.e., 0, 300, 500, 800, 1000 r/min, were considered. Experimental results indicate that the film trajectory could bend under the rotating condition. With the increase of the rotational speed, on the pressure side, the film trajectory inclines centripetally firstly and then centrifugally; whereas, on the suction side the film trajectory bends centrifugally. On the other hand, as the rotational speed increases, the cooling effect is improved firstly and then worsened when Ω > 500–600 r/min on the pressure side. On the suction side, however, the cooling effect is not sensitive to the rotational speed.     

Numerical study on film cooling effectiveness from shaped and crescent holes

This paper presents a comparative numerical investigation on film cooling from a row of holes injected at 35° on a flat plate with three film cooling configurations, including cylindrical hole, 15° forward diffused shaped hole, and new crescent hole. All simulations are conducted at blowing ratio of 0.6 and 1.25, length-to-diameter ratio of four and pitch-to-diameter ratio of three. Computational solutions of the steady, Reynolds averaged Navier–Stokes equations are obtained using a finite volume method. Previous successful application of a two-layer turbulence model to cylindrical hole is extended to predict film cooling for the different hole geometries. It has been found that the film cooling effectiveness of cylindrical holes obviously declined along with increasing the blowing ratio. While the forward diffused shaped hole presents a marked improvement, with a higher effectiveness at the lateral area between adjacent holes. By comparison, the crescent hole exhibits the highest film cooling effectiveness among the three configurations both in spanwise and streamwise especially downstream of the intersection of the two holes. Also, the crescent hole can restrain the vortex intensity, and then enhance the film cooling effectiveness.     

Film cooling effectiveness from trenched shaped and compound holes

This paper presents a comparative-numerical investigation on film cooling from a row of simple and compound-angle holes injected at 35° on a flat plate with four film cooling configurations: (1) cylindrical film hole; (2) 15° forward diffused film hole; (3) trenched cylindrical film hole; (4) trenched 15° forward-diffused film hole. All simulations are at fixed density ratio of 1.6, blowing ratio of 1.25, length-to-diameter L/D = 4 and pitch-to-diameter ratio of 3.0. The effect of length-to-diameter ratio on film cooling has been also investigated using L/D in the range of 1–8. Computational solutions of the steady, Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes equations have been obtained using a finite volume method. It has been found that the shape of the hole and the trenched holes can significantly affect the film cooling flow over the protected surface. Further, it has been shown that the film cooling effectiveness by trenched shaped holes is higher than all other configurations both in spanwise and streamwise specially downstream of the injection. Also, a trenched compound angle injection shaped hole produces much higher film cooling protection than the other configurations investigated in the present paper. The length-to-diameter ratio of trenched holes was found to have a significant effect on film cooling effectiveness and the spread of the coolant jets.     

Numerical modelling of film cooling from converging slot-hole

This paper presents a numerical prediction of a new 3D film cooling hole geometry, the converging slot-hole or console. The console geometry is designed in order to improve the heat transfer and aerodynamic loss performance of turbine vane and rotor blade cooling systems without loosing the mechanical strength of a row of discrete holes. The cross section of the console changes from a circular shape at the inlet to a slot at the exit. Previous successful application of a new anisotropic DNS based two-layer turbulence model to cylindrical and shaped hole injections is extended to predict film cooling for the new console geometry. The suitability of the proposed turbulence model for film cooling flow is validated by comparing the computed and the measured wall-temperature distributions of cylindrical hole injections. The result shows that the anisotropic eddy-viscosity/diffusivity model can correctly predict the spanwise spreading of the temperature field and reduce the strength of the secondary vortices. Comparative computations of the adiabatic film cooling effectiveness associated with the three geometries tested in the present study (cylindrical, shaped, and console) show that the new console film-cooling hole geometry is definitely superior to the other geometries as shown by the uniform lateral spreading of the effectiveness with a slight enhancement downstream of the intersection of the two consoles.     

The effect of turbulence intensity on film cooling of gas turbine blade from trenched shaped holes

This paper reports a computational investigation on the effects of mainstream turbulence intensity on film cooling effectiveness from trenched holes over a symmetrical blade. Computational solutions of the steady, Reynolds-Averaged Navier–Stokes equations are obtained using a finite volume method with k − ε Turbulence model. Whenever possible, computational results are compared with experimental ones from data found in the open literature. Computational results are presented for a row of 25° forward-diffused film hole within transverse slot injected at 35° to AGTB symmetrical blade. Four blowing ratios, M = 0.3, 0.5, 0.9 and 1.3 are studied together with four mainstream turbulence intensities of Tu = 0.5, 2, 4 and 10%. Results indicate that the trenched shaped holes tend to give better film cooling effectiveness than that obtained from discrete shaped holes for all blowing ratios and all turbulence intensities. The trenching of shaped holes has changed the optimum blowing ratio and also the location of re-attachment of separated jet at high blowing ratios. Moreover, it has been found that the effect of mainstream turbulence intensity for trenched shaped holes is similar to that obtained for discrete shaped holes with the exception that the sensitivity of film cooling effectiveness to turbulence intensity has decreased for trenched shaped holes.     

Analysis of upstream,double-row,cylindrical holes on primary and secondary effects of endwall flow and film cooling

Flow features and film cooling performance of five configurations of double-row, cylindrical holes, upstream of an E3 vane, in a linear cascade are numerically investigated. This simulation is completed using a verified turbulence model at four blowing ratios (M = 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, 2.0). The first three configurations have two rows of cylindrical holes, each row with the same compound angle (β=-45°, 0° or 45°), while the other two have two rows with opposite compound angles (β=-45°, 45° and β=45°, -45°), which are also referred to as double-jet film cooling (DJFC) holes. The primary effects on the downstream endwall and the secondary effects on the nearby airfoil of the cooled passage are analyzed and discussed in detail. Results show that at low blowing ratios the movement of the coolant is denominated by the interaction between the jets and vortices resulting in similar film coverage on both the endwall and airfoil. The effect of vortices is reduced at high blowing ratios. It is also shown that the movement of the coolant is determined by the initial velocity direction, as well as the film cooling configuration.     

Detached eddy simulation of blade trailing-edge cutback cooling performance at various ejection slot angles

Detached eddy simulation (DES) has been carried out to study a three-dimensional trailing-edge (TE) cutback turbine blade model with five rows of staggered circular pin-fin arrays inside the cooling passage, in order to evaluate the cooling performance in relation to coolant ejection slot angle. Simulations were performed by adopting a shear-stress transport k-ω turbulence model, and the effects of three different ejection slot angles 5°, 10° and 15° were investigated in terms of the characteristics of adiabatic film-cooling effectiveness, coefficient of discharge, and vortex shedding frequencies, respectively. The results obtained have shown that the TE cutback blade cooling with a 5° coolant ejection slot angle produced a better heat transfer coefficient than the other two ejection slot angles tested. The distributions of adiabatic film-cooling effectiveness along the cutback walls were found to be sensitive to the coolant ejection slot angle, e.g. the increase of ejection slot angle to 15° yielded near unity of cooling effectiveness along the entire breakout walls, whereas the decrease of ejection slot angle caused a drastic decay of cooling effectiveness after the maximum effectiveness has been reached. Of the three angles studied, a TE cutback blade model with a 15° ejection slot angle produced an optimum film-cooling effectiveness. In the breakout region, vortex shedding was observed along the shear layer between the hot gas and the coolant airflow. The shedding frequencies were evaluated to be 2.93, 2.21, and 2.18 kHz for the ejection slot angles of 5°, 10° and 15°, respectively. The findings from this study could be useful to improve existing TE cutback turbine blade design to achieve optimum film-cooling performance.     

Film cooling on a convex surface: influence of external pressure gradient and Mach number on film cooling performance

 The film cooling performance on a convex surface subjected to zero and favourable pressure gradient free-stream flow was investigated. Adiabatic film cooling effectiveness values were obtained for five different injection geometries, three with cylindrical holes and two with shaped holes. Heat transfer coefficients were derived for selected injection configurations. CO₂ was used as coolant to simulate density ratios between coolant and free-stream close to gas turbine engine conditions. The film cooling effectiveness results indicate a strong dependency on the free-stream Mach number level. Results obtained at the higher free-stream Mach number show for cylindrical holes generally and for shaped holes at moderate blowing rates significant higher film cooling effectiveness values compared to the lower free-stream Mach number data. Free-stream acceleration generally reduced adiabatic film cooling effectiveness relative to constant free-stream flow conditions. The different free-stream conditions investigated indicate no significant effects on the corresponding heat transfer increase due to film injection. The determined heat flux ratios or film cooling performance indicated that coolant injection with shaped film cooling holes is much more efficient than with cylindrical holes especially at higher blowing rates. Heat flux penalties can occur at high blowing rates when using cylindrical holes. Received on 29 May 2000     

Multi-objective optimization of discrete film hole arrangement on a high pressure turbine end-wall with conjugate heat transfer simulations

This paper discussed a method of combining a full automatic multi-objective optimization and conjugate heat transfer calculation to obtain optimal cooling layouts on a transonic high pressure guide vane under a realistic turbine working condition. The improvement in cooling design from the optimized models was analyzed in detail, along with a discussion of sensitivities of two objective functions to five design variables. The full automatic method comprises the process of geometry creation, mesh generation, numerical solution and post data analysis. The vane is solid and the end-wall is arranged in a linear cascade. On the end-wall, film holes are all cylindrical and classified in five regions, with region A near the leading edge of the vane, region B near the suction side, regions C and D near the pressure side, and region E for the rest. Five design variables are three pitch-to-hole ratios in regions B, D, E and two compound angles of film holes in regions A and D. Two selected objective functions are area averaged overall cooling effectiveness of the end-wall and aerodynamic losses in a cross-plane at x/C_ax = 1.06 just downstream of the outlet of the cascade. For the optimization process, the multi-objective genetic algorithm based on the Non-dominated Sorted Genetic Algorithm-II was applied. The Latin hypercube sampling method was used to choose 21 experimental design points in the design space, which are also the sources for constructing the surrogate models with the Kriging model. The results demonstrate that the method using full automatic optimization and conjugate heat transfer calculation has achieved an increase of 8.7%–9.5% in area-averaged overall cooling effectiveness and a reduction of about 4.8%–6.1% in aerodynamic losses. The highest increase in cooling effectiveness exists in the region near the pressure side with a mild increase in the middle of the passage. The largest heat flux reduction exists in the regions near the pressure side and the crown of the suction side. The change of compound angle in region A near the leading edge has a negligible influence on overall cooling effectiveness but a high impact on aerodynamic losses. It's advisable to maintain the compound angle and pitch-to-diameter ratio at low values in region D near the pressure side to obtain high cooling performance.     

Influence of coolant injector configuration on film cooling effectiveness for gaseous and liquid film coolants

An experimental investigation is conducted to bring out the effects of coolant injector configuration on film cooling effectiveness, film cooled length and film uniformity associated with gaseous and liquid coolants. A series of measurements are performed using hot air as the core gas and gaseous nitrogen and water as the film coolants in a cylindrical test section simulating a thrust chamber. Straight and compound angle injection at two different configurations of 30°–10° and 45°–10° are investigated for the gaseous coolant. Tangential injection at 30° and compound angle injection at 30°–10° are examined for the liquid coolant. The analysis is based on measurements of the film-cooling effectiveness and film uniformity downstream of the injection location at different blowing ratios. Measured results showed that compound angle configuration leads to lower far-field effectiveness and shorter film length compared to tangential injection in the case of liquid film cooling. For similar injector configurations, effectiveness along the stream wise direction showed flat characteristics initially for the liquid coolant, while it was continuously dropping for the gaseous coolant. For liquid coolant, deviations in temperature around the circumference are very low near the injection point, but increases to higher values for regions away from the coolant injection locations. The study brings out the existance of an optimum gaseous film coolant injector configuration for which the effectiveness is maximum.     

Effects of injection angle orientation on concave and convex surfaces film cooling

The present study employs a transient liquid crystal thermography to measure film cooling performance over constant curvature of concave and convex surfaces. This work investigates detailed distributions of both film cooling effectiveness and heat transfer coefficient on concave and convex surfaces with one row of injection holes inclined stream-wise at 35° at four blowing ratios (0.5, 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0) on four test pieces with different hole configurations. All test models have a row of discrete holes with a stream-wise injection angle (γ of 35° and a pitch-to-diameter ratio (P/d) of 3. The current work examines four different injection configurations, one with simple and three with 8° forward-expanded holes. Three compound angles of 0, 45 and 90° with air (ρ_c/ρ_m = 0.98) as coolants are tested under the mainstream Reynolds number (Re_d) of 2300 on concave surface, and 1700 on convex surface. Measured results of the concave surface show that both the span-wise averaged heat transfer coefficient and film cooling effectiveness increase with blowing ratios for all tested models. Higher heat transfer levels induced by large flow disturbance of compound-angle injection also lead to poorer overall film cooling performance, especially at high blowing ratio and large span-wise injection angle. Present results show that the best surface protection on the concave surface over the widest range of M can be provided by the forward-expanded holes with β = 0° (Model-B), followed by the forward-expanded holes with β = 45° (Model-C). Convex surface results show that the compound-angle injection indicates increases in both film cooling effectiveness and heat transfer at moderate and high blowing ratios. The forward-expanded hole with simple-angle injection provides the best film performance because of high film cooling effectiveness and low heat transfer coefficient at blowing ratio of 0.5.     

Improvement of film cooling effectiveness with a small downstream block body

The aim of this study is to predict the improvement in film cooling performance over a flat plate through a single row of cylindrical holes with different streamwise angles by using the Ansys CFX software package. In order to improve the film cooling effectiveness, a short crescent-shaped block is placed downstream of a cylindrical cooling hole. The numerical results of the cylindrical hole without the downstream short crescent-shaped block are compared with experimental data.     

Flow visualisation of the external flow from a converging slot-hole film-cooling geometry

This paper presents flow visualisation experiments for a novel film-cooling hole, the converging slot-hole or console for short. Previously published experimental results have demonstrated that the console improved both the heat transfer and the aerodynamic performance of turbine vane and rotor blade cooling systems. Flow visualisation data for a row of consoles were compared with that of cylindrical and fan-shaped holes and a slot at the same inclination angle of 35° to the surface, on a large-scale, flat-plate model at engine-representative Reynolds numbers in a low speed tunnel with ambient temperature mainstream flow. In the first set of experiments, the flow was visualised by using a fine nylon mesh covered with thermochromic liquid crystals, allowing the measurement of gas temperature contours in planes perpendicular to the flow. This data demonstrated that the console film was similar to a slot film, and remained thin and attached to the surface for the coolant-to-mainstream momentum flux ratios of 1.1 to 40 and for a case with no crossflow (infinite momentum flux ratio). A second set of flow visualisation experiments using water/dry-ice fog have confirmed these results and have shown that the flow through all coolant geometries is unsteady.     

Numerical simulation of the effect of plasma aerodynamic actuation on improving film hole cooling performance

The primary goal of this paper is to study film cooling performance for a cylindrical hole with plasma aerodynamic actuation. The simulation model of plasma aerodynamic actuation on improving film hole cooling effectiveness was established. The heat effect of plasma aerodynamic actuation model was taken into consideration. It was firstly found that the velocity and blowing ratio greatly affect the film cooling effectiveness. Then, position, power input, and the number of plasma actuators were particularly investigated.     

Effect of incidence angle with wake passing on a film cooled leading edge: A numerical study

This work presents the numerical study of a film‐cooled blade under the influence of wake passing at different incidence angles. The film cooling technology has been proven to be effective to increase the blade life of first turbine stages. However, the leading edge is affected by an high heat transfer rate and cooling this region is difficult. Moreover, separated regions downstream the coolant injection increases the local heat transfer coefficient and can have a detrimental effect in terms of airfoil life. This work analyses how the flow field is affected by the wake passing at different incidence angles (?5, 0, 5) and the impact on heat transfer coefficient. The test case is a linear cascade with two rows of cylindrical holes at the leading edge. Two different holes arrangements are compared in terms of film cooling structures, namely AGTB‐B1 and AGTB‐B2 with 0 and 45^° spanwise inclination. The numerical results show a good agreement with the experiments. A deeper investigation is carried out on AGTB‐B1. The results obtained show that the wake passing and the incidence angle have a strong effect on coolant jets. In particular, there is a significative impact on coolant redistribution near the leading edge. The wake passing has a stronger effect on pressure side, mainly at negative incidence. The predictive approach is based on an U‐RANS in‐house CFD solver using a conventional two‐equations closure. In order to avoid extra turbulence production, critical in the leading edge region, the turbulence model incorporates an extra algebraic equation that enforces a realizability constraint. The unsteady formulation is based on a dual time stepping approach with a sliding plane between the moving bars and the cascade. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Aerodynamic analysis and validation by using three turbulence models for narrow trench configuration

Three turbulence models SST Gamma Theta, k-ω and k-ε which all found in ANSYS CFX were used. Velocity contours, pressure coefficient profiles and turbulence levels contours were discussed. Results indicate that three models calculated the cross flow boundary layer with different thicknesses. This leads to a difference in calculation each the momentum of the cross flow fluid closer to the jet exit and cooling performance. At M = 0.5 from range X/D = 5:40, the average centerline effectiveness values in case SST Gamma Theta model and k-ω model were 21 and 9.2 % larger than k-ε model, respectively. While at high blowing ratios 1 and 1.4, the effectiveness values in case SST Gamma Theta model and k-ω model were 16, 24.4 % and 32, 46 % less than k-ε model, respectively. k-ω model shows a larger backflow regions than others which a maximum negative value of u/u_∞ = ?0.198 is reached in zone 4.     

Étude des structures spirales à la périphérie d'une cavité rotor–stator aspiréeStudy of spiral structures at the periphery of an aspirated rotor–stator cavity

The influence of suction on the spirals pattern that appear on the periphery of an aspirated opened rotor–stator cavity is studied by means of tomography. A radial gap, located between the rotating disk and the fixed cylindrical wall allow the suction of an outer flux made up of a jet of fresh air and a high contrasted smoke thin sheet produced in the outside cavity Ekman layer. Sequences of tomographies allow the characterization of the apparition and disappearance thresholds according to Reynolds number, suction and wave number. To cite this article: D. Rémy et al., C. R. Mecanique 332 (2004).     

Numerical modelling of film cooling with and without mist injection

Two-phase CFD calculations, using a Lagrangian model and commercial code Fluent 6.2.16, were employed to calculate the gas and droplet flows and film cooling effectiveness with and without mist on a flat plate. Two different three dimensional geometries are generated and the effects of the geometrical shape, size of droplets, mist concentration in the coolant flow and temperature of mainstream flow for different blowing ratios are studied. A cylindrical and laterally diffused hole with a streamwise angle of 30° and spanwise angle of 0° are used. The diameter of film cooling (d) hole, and the hole length to diameter ratio (L/d) for both of geometries are 10 mm and 4, respectively. Also the blowing ratio ranges from 1.0 to 2.0, and the mainstream Reynolds number based on the mainstream velocity and hole diameter (Re _d) is 6,219. The results are shown for different droplets diameters (1–10 μm), concentrations (1–5%) and mainstream temperatures (350–500 K). The centreline effectiveness and distribution of effectiveness on the surface of cooling wall are presented.