An Experimental Study of Film Cooling Effectiveness Near the Leading Edge of a Turbine Blade

1994 ◽  
Vol 116 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Salcudean ◽  
I. Gartshore ◽  
K. Zhang ◽  
I. McLean

A flame ionization technique based on the heat/mass transfer analogy has been used in an experimental investigation of film cooling effectiveness. The measurements were made over the surface of a turbine blade model composed of a semi-cylindrical leading edge bonded to a flat after-body. The secondary flow was injected into the boundary layer through four rows of holes located at ±15 and ±44 deg about the stagnation line of the leading edge. These holes, of diameter d, had a 30 deg spanwise inclination and a 4d spanwise spacing. Adjacent rows of holes were staggered by 2d, and perfect geometry symmetry was maintained across the stagnation line. Discharge coefficients and flow division between the 15 and 44 deg rows of holes have also been measured. The strong pressure gradient near the leading edge produces a strongly nonuniform flow division between the first (± 15 deg) and the second (± 44 deg) row of holes at low overall mass flow ratios. This produced a total cutoff of the coolant from the first row of holes at mass flow ratios lower than approximately 0.4, leaving the leading edge unprotected near the stagnation line. Streamwise and spanwise plots of effectiveness show that the best effectiveness values are obtained in a very narrow range of mass flux ratios near 0.4 where there is also considerable sensitivity to changes in Reynolds number. The effectiveness values deteriorate abruptly with decreasing mass flow ratios, and substantially with increasing mass flow ratios. Therefore, it was concluded that the cooling arrangement investigated has poor characteristics, and some suggestions are made for alternate designs.

Author(s):  
M. Salcudean ◽  
I. Gartshore ◽  
K. Zhang ◽  
Y. Barnea

Experiments have been conducted on a large model of a turbine blade. Attention has been focussed on the leading edge region, which has a semi-circular shape and four rows of film cooling holes positioned symmetrically about the stagnation line. The cooling holes were oriented in a spanwise direction with an inclination of 30° to the surface, and had streamwise locations of ±15° and ±44° from the stagnation line. Film cooling effectiveness was measured using a heat/mass analogy. Single row cooling from the holes at 15° and 44° showed similar patterns: spanwise averaged effectiveness which rises from zero at zero coolant mass flow to a maximum value η* at some value of mass flow ratio M*, then drops to low values of η at higher M. The trends can be quantitatively explained from simple momentum considerations for either air or CO2 as the coolant gas. Close to the holes, air provides higher η values for small M. At higher M, particularly farther downstream, the CO2 may be superior. The use of an appropriately defined momentum ratio G collapses the data from both holes using either CO2 or air as coolant onto a single curve. For η*, the value of G for all data is about 0.1. Double row cooling with air as coolant shows that the relative stagger of the two rows is an important parameter. Holes in line with each other in successive rows can provide improvements in spanwise averaged film cooling effectiveness of as much as 100% over the common staggered arrangement. This improvement is due to the interaction between coolant from rows one and two, which tends to provide complete coverage of the downstream surface when the rows are placed correctly with respect to each other.


Author(s):  
Ian S. Gartshore ◽  
Marthe Salcudean ◽  
Y. Barnea ◽  
K. Zhang ◽  
F. Aghadsi

Experiments have been conducted on a large wind tunnel model of the leading edge region of a turbine blade. The model had a semi-circular leading edge in which four rows of holes were symmetrically placed about the stagnation line, two at ±15° and two at ±44°. Air and alternatively CO2 were injected from the coolant holes after contamination with a known small percentage of propane. Using a flame ionization detector and the mass transfer analogy, the film cooling effectiveness was measured at various overall mass flow ratios and at various streamwise locations for each coolant type. The division of coolant flow rate from the two rows of holes was found to be more unequal for CO2 than for air, an effect which is predicted from a simple analysis of the coolant/free stream interaction and the hole discharge coefficient. This has practical implications for actual turbine operation since earlier cut-off of the coolant from the front row of holes, due to density differences, could have disastrous effects on the blade. This effect also further complicates any attempt to identify overall trends of coolant density on performance. It is not possible to conclude that air or CO2 coolant has a higher film cooling effectiveness, although, in general, air appears better close to the first row of holes, and CO2 better at some distance downstream of both rows. Based on the measurements, the effects of mass flow ratio, momentum flux ratio, relative hole placement in each row, and spanwise versus streamwise injection are discussed in the paper.


Author(s):  
Pingfan He ◽  
Martha Salcudean ◽  
Ian S. Gartshore

Computations of film cooling are presented based on the geometry of a UBC experimental turbine blade model. This model has a semi-circlar leading edge with four rows of laterally-inclined film cooling orifices positioned symmetrically about the stagnation line. The computational domain follows the physical domain and includes the curved blade surface as well as the coolant regions in the circular coolant orifices. The injection orifices are inclined spanwise at 30° to the blade surface. A multi-zone curvilinear grid is used to simulate the complex configuration. Grids are generated by a block-structured elliptic grid generation method which represents exactly the curved blade surface as well as the circular injection orifices. Computations over the cooled turbine blade model are carried out for overall mass flow ratios of 0.52 and 0.97. The relative mass flow ratios from each orifice are specified to match experimental values. Density ratios of coolant to free stream were taken to be unity (constant density). Comparison of predicted film cooling effectiveness with experimental data showed reasonable agreement.


Author(s):  
Fade´la Nemdili ◽  
Abbe`s Azzi ◽  
Bassam A. Jubran

The performance of the SSG Reynolds Stress Model for the prediction of film cooling at the leading edge of a symmetrical turbine blade model is investigated. The test case blade model is symmetric and has one injection row of discrete cylindrical holes on each side near the leading edge. In the present computation several blowing ratios of 45° lateral injection are tested and compared with previous streamwise computations. Further, film cooling effectiveness contours on the blade surface and lateral averaged adiabatic film cooling effectiveness are presented and compared with available measurements. In addition to validation data, several longitudinal and transversal contours and vector planes are reproduced and clearly found to underscore the anisotropic turbulent field occurring in the present shower head film cooling configuration. The advantage of lateral versus streamwise injection is highlighted by the destruction of the two contra rotating vortices which are responsible of cooling effectiveness decrease. In case of lateral injection only one vortex is found and the flow structure is radically different from that known by streamwise jet in cross flow.


Author(s):  
Mingjie Zhang ◽  
Nian Wang ◽  
Andrew F. Chen ◽  
Je-Chin Han

This paper presents the turbine blade leading edge model film cooling effectiveness with shaped holes, using the pressure sensitive paint (PSP) mass transfer analogy method. The effects of leading edge profile, coolant to mainstream density ratio and blowing ratio are studied. Computational simulations are performed using the realizable k-ε turbulence model. Effectiveness obtained by CFD simulations are compared with experiments. Three leading edge profiles, including one semi-cylinder and two semi-elliptical cylinders with an after body, are investigated. The ratios of major to minor axis of two semi-elliptical cylinders are 1.5 and 2.0, respectively. The leading edge has three rows of shaped holes. For the semi-cylinder model, shaped holes are located at 0 degrees (stagnation line) and ± 30 degrees. Row spacing between cooling holes and the distance between impingement plate and stagnation line are the same for three leading edge models. The coolant to mainstream density ratio varies from 1.0 to 1.5 and 2.0, and the blowing ratio varies from 0.5 to 1.0 and 1.5. Mainstream Reynolds number is about 100,900 based on the diameter of the leading edge cylinder, and the mainstream turbulence intensity is about 7%. The results provide an understanding of the effects of leading edge profile and on turbine blade leading edge region film cooling with shaped-hole designs.


Author(s):  
Pingfan He ◽  
Dragos Licu ◽  
Martha Salcudean ◽  
Ian S. Gartshore

The effect of varying coolant density on film cooling effectiveness for a turbine blade-model was numerically investigated and compared with experimental data. This model had a semi-circular leading edge with four rows of laterally-inclined film cooling orifices positioned symmetrically about the stagnation line. A curvilinear coordinate-based CFD code was developed and used for the numerical investigation. The code used a domain segmentation strategy in conjunction with general curvilinear grids to model the complex blade configuration. A multigrid method was used to accelerate the convergence rate. The time-averaged, variable-density, Navier-Stokes equations together with the energy or scalar equation were solved. Turbulence closure was attained by the standard k–ε model with a near-wall k model. Either air or CO2 was used as coolant in three cases of injection through single rows and alternatively staggered double raws of holes. Two different blowing rates were investigated in each case and compared with experimental data. The experimental results were obtained using a wind tunnel model, and the mass/heat analogy was used to determine the film cooling effectiveness. The higher density of the carbon dioxide coolant (approximately 1.5 times the density of air) in the isothermal mass injection experiments, was used to simulate the effects of injection of a colder air in the corresponding adiabatic heat transfer situation. Good agreement between calculated and measured film cooling effectiveness was found for low blowing ratio M ≤ 0.5 and the effect of density was not significant. At higher blowing ratio M > 1 the calculations consistently overpredict the measured values of film cooling effectiveness.


Author(s):  
S. Ravelli ◽  
G. Barigozzi

The performance of a showerhead arrangement of film cooling in the leading edge region of a first stage nozzle guide vane was experimentally and numerically evaluated. A six-vane linear cascade was tested at an isentropic exit Mach number of Ma2s = 0.42, with a high inlet turbulence intensity level of 9%. The showerhead cooling scheme consists of four staggered rows of cylindrical holes evenly distributed around the stagnation line, angled at 45° towards the tip. The blowing ratios tested are BR = 2.0, 3.0 and 4.0. Adiabatic film cooling effectiveness distributions on the vane surface around the leading edge region were measured by means of Thermochromic Liquid Crystals technique. Since the experimental contours of adiabatic effectiveness showed that there is no periodicity across the span, the CFD calculations were conducted by simulating the whole vane. Within the RANS framework, the very widely used Realizable k-ε (Rke) and the Shear Stress Transport k-ω (SST) turbulence models were chosen for simulating the effect of the BR on the surface distribution of adiabatic effectiveness. The turbulence model which provided the most accurate steady prediction, i.e. Rke, was selected for running Detached Eddy Simulation at the intermediate value of BR = 3. Fluctuations of the local temperature were computed by DES, due to the vortex structures within the shear layers between the main flow and the coolant jets. Moreover, mixing was enhanced both in the wall-normal and spanwise direction, compared to RANS modeling. DES roughly halved the prediction error of laterally averaged film cooling effectiveness on the suction side of the leading edge. However, neither DES nor RANS provided the expected decay of effectiveness progressing downstream along the pressure side, with 15% overestimation of ηav at s/C =0.2.


Author(s):  
Andrew F. Chen ◽  
Chao-Cheng Shiau ◽  
Je-Chin Han

The combined effects of inlet purge flow and the slashface leakage flow on the film cooling effectiveness of a turbine blade platform were studied using the pressure sensitive paint (PSP) technique. Detailed film cooling effectiveness distributions on the endwall were obtained and analyzed. The inlet purge flow was generated by a row of equally-spaced cylindrical injection holes inside a single-tooth generic stator-rotor seal. In addition to the traditional 90 degree (radial outward) injection for the inlet purge flow, injection at a 45 degree angle was adopted to create a circumferential/azimuthal velocity component toward the suction side of the blades, which created a swirl ratio (SR) of 0.6. Discrete cylindrical film cooling holes were arranged to achieve an improved coverage on the endwall. Backward injection was attempted by placing backward injection holes near the pressure side leading edge portion. Slashface leakage flow was simulated by equally-spaced cylindrical injection holes inside a slot. Experiments were done in a five-blade linear cascade with an average turbulence intensity of 10.5%. The inlet and exit Mach numbers were 0.26 and 0.43, respectively. The inlet and exit mainstream Reynolds numbers based on the axial chord length of the blade were 475,000 and 720,000, respectively. The coolant-to-mainstream mass flow ratios (MFR) were varied from 0.5%, 0.75%, to 1% for the inlet purge flow. For the endwall film cooling holes and slashface leakage flow, blowing ratios (M) of 0.5, 1.0, and 1.5 were examined. Coolant-to-mainstream density ratios (DR) that range from 1.0 (close to low temperature experiments) to 1.5 (intermediate DR) and 2.0 (close to engine conditions) were also examined. The results provide the gas turbine engine designers a better insight into improved film cooling hole configurations as well as various parametric effects on endwall film cooling when the inlet (swirl) purge flow and slashface leakage flow were incorporated.


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