Coolant Jets Blowing Across the Airfoil Stagnation Line to Enhance Film Effectiveness

2020 ◽  
Vol 142 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas E. Holgate ◽  
Peter T. Ireland ◽  
Eduardo Romero

Abstract A novel airfoil leading edge film cooling design has been investigated, and its performance over conventional alternatives quantified. In conventional designs, the region near the geometric stagnation line is typically between the two most upstream film hole rows, which each emit coolant in the downstream direction on their respective sides of the airfoil. This region is thus relatively starved of coolant flow and adequate cooling is achieved inefficiently with a high density of holes expelling a large amount of coolant in order to dilute the nearby mainstream flow. Drawing inspiration from recent literature on reverse-blowing film cooling holes, several film cooling geometries have been designed and tested with a view to improving upon this situation by blowing coolant from each side of the airfoil geometric stagnation line to the other in a criss-cross pattern. This is found to be capable of producing much higher film effectiveness near the stagnation line than a series of more conventional designs which were also tested, without decreasing downstream film effectiveness. A method is also described for using experimental film effectiveness data to estimate two novel measures of the efficiency of leading edge film coolant usage: the proportion of the mainstream which interacts with leading edge film coolant and the proportion of coolant from the two most upstream film hole rows which reaches the stagnation line.

2009 ◽  
Vol 131 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhihong Gao ◽  
Je-Chin Han

The effect of film-hole geometry and angle on turbine blade leading edge film cooling has been experimentally studied using the pressure sensitive paint technique. The leading edge is modeled by a blunt body with a semicylinder and an after-body. Two film cooling designs are considered: a heavily film cooled leading edge featured with seven rows of film cooling holes and a moderately film cooled leading edge with three rows. For the seven-row design, the film holes are located at 0 deg (stagnation line), ±15 deg, ±30 deg, and ±45 deg on the model surface. For the three-row design, the film holes are located at 0 deg and ±30 deg. Four different film cooling hole configurations are applied to each design: radial angle cylindrical holes, compound angle cylindrical holes, radial angle shaped holes, and compound angle shaped holes. Testing was done in a low speed wind tunnel. The Reynolds number, based on mainstream velocity and diameter of the cylinder, is 100,900. The mainstream turbulence intensity is about 7% near of leading edge model and the turbulence integral length scale is about 1.5 cm. Five averaged blowing ratios are tested ranging from M=0.5 to M=2.0. The results show that the shaped holes provide higher film cooling effectiveness than the cylindrical holes, particularly at higher average blowing ratios. The radial angle holes give better effectiveness than the compound angle holes at M=1.0–2.0. The seven-row film cooling design results in much higher effectiveness on the leading edge region than the three-row design at the same average blowing ratio or same amount coolant flow.


Author(s):  
Zhihong Gao ◽  
Lesley M. Wright ◽  
Je-Chin Han

Film cooling is commonly used on the leading edge of turbine blades to protect the blade surface from hot mainstream gases in the turbine. Obtaining detailed film cooling effectiveness distributions on the leading edge can be challenging. This paper considers two measurement techniques which can be applied to the leading edge (modeled by a cylinder) to obtain detailed distributions of the film effectiveness. A steady state pressure sensitive paint (PSP) technique and a transient infrared (IR) thermography technique are used to obtain detailed film cooling effectiveness distributions on the cylinder. The cylinder, 7.62 cm in diameter, is placed in a low speed wind tunnel, with the mainstream flow having a Reynolds number of 100,900 (based on the cylinder diameter). The cylinder has two rows of film cooling holes located at ±15° from the cylinder’s stagnation line. The pitch-to-diameter ratio of the film holes is 4, and holes are inclined 30° in spanwise direction. PSP continues to show promise for film cooling effectiveness measurements. Detailed distributions can be obtained near the film cooling holes because this technique relies on mass transfer rather than heat transfer. In order to reduce the error caused by conduction in heat transfer experiments, transient measurement techniques are favorable. Transient IR measurements are taken, and film cooling effectiveness is determined on the cylinder’s surface. Although the effect of conduction is reduced with the transient IR technique (compared to a steady state heat transfer experiment), heat conduction through the cylinder has not been eliminated (or even minimized). Without correction, the results obtained from transient heat transfer experiments must be used cautiously. For this reason, PSP is developing a niche within the gas turbine community for detailed film cooling effectiveness measurements.


2019 ◽  
Vol 141 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol E. Bryant ◽  
Connor J. Wiese ◽  
James L. Rutledge ◽  
Marc D. Polanka

Gas turbine components are protected through a combination of internal cooling and external film cooling. Efforts aimed at improving cooling are often focused on either the internal cooling or the film cooling; however, the common coolant flow means the internal and external cooling schemes are linked and the coolant holes themselves provide another convective path for heat transfer to the coolant. Measurements of overall cooling effectiveness, ϕ, using matched Biot number models allow evaluation of fully cooled components; however, the relative contributions of internal cooling, external cooling, and convection within the film cooling holes are not well understood. Matched Biot number experiments, complemented by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations, were performed on a fully film cooled cylindrical leading edge model to quantify the effects of alterations in the cooling design. The relative influence of film cooling and cooling within the holes was evaluated by selectively disabling individual holes and quantifying how ϕ changed. Testing of several impingement cooling schemes revealed that impingement has a negligible influence on ϕ in the showerhead region. This indicates that the pressure drop penalties with impingement may not always be compensated by an increase in ϕ. Instead, internal cooling from convection within the holes and film cooling were shown to be the dominant contributors to ϕ. Indeed, the numerous holes within the showerhead region impede the ability of internal surface cooling schemes to influence the outside surface temperature. These results may allow improved focus of efforts on the forms of cooling with the greatest potential to improve performance.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jian Liu ◽  
Xi Wenxiong ◽  
Mengyao Xu ◽  
Jiawen Song ◽  
Shibin Luo ◽  
...  

Purpose Endwall film cooling protects vane endwall by coolant coverage, especially at the leading edge (LE) region and vane-pressure side (PS) junction region. Strong flow impingement and complex vortexaa structures on the vane endwall cause difficulties for coolant flows to cover properly. This work aims at a full-scale arrangement of film cooling holes on the endwall which improves coolant efficiency in the LE region and vane-PS junction region. Design/methodology/approach The endwall film holes are grouped in four-holes constructal patterns. Three ways of arranging the groups are studied: based on the pressure field, the streamlines or the heat transfer field. The computational analysis is done with the k-ω SST model after validating the turbulence model properly. Findings By clustering the film cooling holes in four-holes patterns, the ejection of the coolant flow is stronger. The four-holes constructal patterns also improve the local coolant coverage in the “tough” regions, such as the junction region of the PS and the endwall. The arrangement based on streamlines distribution can effectively improve the coolant coverage and the arrangement based on the heat transfer distribution (HTD) has benefits by reducing high-temperature regions on the endwall. Originality/value A full-scale endwall film cooling design is presented considering interactions of different film cooling holes. A comprehensive model validation and mesh independence study are provided. The cooling holes pattern on the endwall is designed as four-holes constructal patterns combined with several arrangement choices, i.e. by pressure, by heat transfer and by streamline distributions.


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):  
Lv Ye ◽  
Zhao Liu ◽  
Xiangyu Wang ◽  
Zhenping Feng

This paper presents a numerical simulation of composite cooling on a first stage vane of a gas turbine, in which gas by fixed composition mixture is adopted. To investigate the flow and heat transfer characteristics, two internal chambers which contain multiple arrays of impingement holes are arranged in the vane, several arrays of pin-fins are arranged in the trailing edge region, and a few arrays of film cooling holes are arranged on the vane surfaces to form the cooling film. The coolant enters through the shroud inlet, and then divided into two parts. One part is transferred into the chamber in the leading edge region, and then after impinging on the target surfaces, it proceeds further to go through the film cooling holes distributed on the vane surface, while the other part enters into the second chamber immediately and then exits to the mainstream in two ways to effectively cool the other sections of the vane. In this study, five different coolant flow rates and six different inlet pressure ratios were investigated. All the cases were performed with the same domain grids and same boundary conditions. It can be concluded that for the internal surfaces, the heat transfer coefficient changes gradually with the coolant flow rate and the inlet total pressure ratio, while for the external surfaces, the average cooling effectiveness increases with the increase of coolant mass flow rates while decreases with the increase of the inlet stagnation pressure ratios within the study range.


Author(s):  
Ross Johnson ◽  
Jonathan Maikell ◽  
David Bogard ◽  
Justin Piggush ◽  
Atul Kohli ◽  
...  

When a turbine blade passes through wakes from upstream vanes it is subjected to an oscillation of the direction of the approach flow resulting in the oscillation of the position of the stagnation line on the leading edge of the blade. In this study an experimental facility was developed that induced a similar oscillation of the stagnation line position on a simulated turbine blade leading edge. The overall effectiveness was evaluated at various blowing ratios and stagnation line oscillation frequencies. The location of the stagnation line on the leading edge was oscillated to simulate a change in angle of attack between α = ± 5° at a range of frequencies from 2 to 20 Hz. These frequencies were chosen based on matching a range of Strouhal numbers typically seen in an engine due to oscillations caused by passing wakes. The blowing ratio was varied between M = 1, M = 2, and M = 3. These experiments were carried out at a density ratio of DR = 1.5 and mainstream turbulence levels of Tu ≈ 6%. The leading edge model was made of high conductivity epoxy in order to match the Biot number of an actual engine airfoil. Results of these tests showed that the film cooling performance with an oscillating stagnation line was degraded by as much as 25% compared to the performance of a steady flow with the stagnation line aligned with the row of holes at the leading edge.


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):  
Vijay K. Garg

A multi-block, three-dimensional Navier-Stokes code has been used to compute heat transfer coefficient on the blade, hub and shroud for a rotating high-pressure turbine blade with 172 film-cooling holes in eight rows. Film cooling effectiveness is also computed on the adiabatic blade. Wilcox’s k-ω model is used for modeling the turbulence. Of the eight rows of holes, three are staggered on the shower-head with compound-angled holes. With so many holes on the blade it was somewhat of a challenge to get a good quality grid on and around the blade and in the tip clearance region. The final multi-block grid consists of 4784 elementary blocks which were merged into 276 super blocks. The viscous grid has over 2.2 million cells. Each hole exit, in its true oval shape, has 80 cells within it so that coolant velocity, temperature, k and ω distributions can be specified at these hole exits. It is found that for the given parameters, heat transfer coefficient on the cooled, isothermal blade is highest in the leading edge region and in the tip region. Also, the effectiveness over the cooled, adiabatic blade is the lowest in these regions. Results for an uncooled blade are also shown, providing a direct comparison with those for the cooled blade. Also, the heat transfer coefficient is much higher on the shroud as compared to that on the hub for both the cooled and the uncooled cases.


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