An Experimental Investigation of an Anti-Vortex Film Cooling Geometry Under Low and High Turbulence Conditions

Author(s):  
Sebastian Schulz ◽  
Simon Maier ◽  
Jeffrey P. Bons

In an attempt to abate the detrimental jet vorticity and lift-off effects at high blowing ratios, the objective of the present study is to investigate the impact of an anti-vortex film cooling hole design on the film cooling effectiveness and the secondary flow field. Furthermore, the influence of low and high turbulence levels is studied with Tu ≈ .0.7% and ≈ 10%, respectively. For the experiments infrared thermography and particle image velocimetry (PIV) are employed. The experiments are conducted in a subsonic wind tunnel at a Reynolds number of 11000 based on the film cooling hole diameter. A flat plate model with an array of three cylindrical primary holes with secondary offshoots to each side represents the anti-vortex geometry. The cylindrical hole arrangement with a diameter of 17.5 mm is inclined at 30° in streamwise direction, with the anti-vortex holes branching off from the primary hole base in a 21° angle. Information from a flat plate with six cylindrical holes of 17.5 mm in diameter inclined at 30 in streamwise direction is used as baseline for comparison. The primary hole spacing was 4.75 and 3 hole diameters, respectively. Results are presented for blowing ratios of 1 and 2 with a constant density ratio of 1.1. The PIV measurements are taken in two planes perpendicular to the flow direction to record the secondary flow structures. The results of the infrared thermography show a strong decrease in film cooling effectiveness as high turbulence levels occur, especially for low blowing ratios. For higher blowing ratios low and high turbulence levels have similar effects on film cooling effectiveness. A significant improvement in film cooling performance is displayed by the anti-vortex design over the standard circular hole arrangement for every blowing ratio. The effectiveness results reveal an improved lateral spreading of the coolant with coolant jets staying attached throughout the series of experiments. By remaining inside the boundary layer, the effects of a high turbulent freestream on film cooling performance is less. The PIV results unveil information of a new vortex pair on either side of the primary hole kidney vortex. Especially at high blowing ratios the results indicate, that the anti-vortex hole design promotes the interaction between the vortical structures, explaining the increased lateral film effectiveness results. The factor which lends to the superior performance and credibility of the studied anti-vortex design is that the results are obtained for 35% less mass flow than the baseline.

Author(s):  
Qingzong Xu ◽  
Qiang Du ◽  
Pei Wang ◽  
Jun Liu ◽  
Guang Liu

High inlet temperature of turbine vane increases the demand of high film cooling effectiveness. Vane endwall region was extensively cooled due to the high and flat exit temperature distribution of combustor. Leakage flow from the combustor-turbine gap was used to cool the endwall region except for preventing hot gas ingestion. Numerical predictions were conducted to investigate the flow structure and adiabatic film cooling effectiveness of endwall region in a linear cascade with vane-endwall junction fillet. The simulations were completed by solving the three-dimensional Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes(RANS) equations with shear stress transport(SST) k-ω turbulence model, meanwhile, the computational method and turbulence model were validated by comparing computational result with the experiment. Three types of linear fillet with the length-to-height ratio of 0.5, 1 and 2, named fillet A, fillet B and fillet C respectively, were studied. In addition, circular fillet with radius of 2mm was compared with linear fillet B. The interrupted slot, produced by changing the way of junction of combustor and turbine vane endwall, is introduced at X/Cax = −0.2 upstream of the vane leading edge. Results showed that fillet can significantly affect the cooling performance on the endwall due to suppressing the strength of the secondary flow. Fillet C presented the best cooling performance comparing to fillet A and fillet B because a portion of the coolant which climbs to the fillet was barely affected by secondary flow. Results also showed the effect of fillet on the total pressure loss. The result indicated that only fillet A slightly decreases endwall loss.


2019 ◽  
Vol 141 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dale W. Fox ◽  
Fraser B. Jones ◽  
John W. McClintic ◽  
David G. Bogard ◽  
Thomas E. Dyson ◽  
...  

Most studies of turbine airfoil film cooling in laboratory test facilities have used relatively large plenums to feed flow into the coolant holes. However, a more realistic inlet condition for the film cooling holes is a relatively small channel. Previous studies have shown that the film cooling performance is significantly degraded when fed by perpendicular internal crossflow in a smooth channel. In this study, angled rib turbulators were installed in two geometric configurations inside the internal crossflow channel, at 45 deg and 135 deg, to assess the impact on film cooling effectiveness. Film cooling hole inlets were positioned in both prerib and postrib locations to test the effect of hole inlet position on film cooling performance. A test was performed independently varying channel velocity ratio and jet to mainstream velocity ratio. These results were compared to the film cooling performance of previously measured shaped holes fed by a smooth internal channel. The film cooling hole discharge coefficients and channel friction factors were also measured for both rib configurations with varying channel and inlet velocity ratios. Spatially averaged film cooling effectiveness is largely similar to the holes fed by the smooth internal crossflow channel, but hole-to-hole variation due to inlet position was observed.


Author(s):  
Rui Zhu ◽  
Gongnan Xie ◽  
Terrence W. Simon

Secondary holes to a main film cooling hole are used to improve film cooling performance by creating anti-kidney vortices. The effects of injection angle of the secondary holes on both film cooling effectiveness and surrounding thermal and flow fields are investigated in this numerical study. Two kinds of primary hole shapes are adopted. One is a cylindrical hole, the other is a horn-shaped hole which is designed from a cylindrical hole by expanding the hole in the transverse direction to double the hole size at the exit. Two smaller cylindrical holes, the secondary holes, are located symmetrically about the centerline and downstream of the primary hole. Three compound injection angles (α = 30°, 45° and 60°, β = 30°) of the secondary holes are analyzed while the injection angle of the primary hole is kept at 45°. Cases with various blowing ratios are computed. It is shown from the simulation that cooling effectiveness of secondary holes with a horn-shaped primary hole is better than that with a cylindrical primary hole, especially at high blowing ratios. With a cylindrical primary hole, increasing inclination angle of the secondary holes provides better cooling effectiveness because the anti-kidney vortices created by shallow secondary holes cannot counteract the kidney vortex pairs adequately, enhancing mixing of main flow and coolant. For secondary holes with a horn-shaped primary hole, large secondary hole inclination angles provide better cooling performance at low blowing ratios; but, at high blowing ratios, secondary holes with small inclination angles are more effective, as the film coverage becomes wider in the downstream area.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Siavash Khajehhasani

A numerical investigation of the film cooling performance on novel film hole schemes is presented using Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes analysis. The investigation considers low and high blowing ratios for both flat plate film cooling and the leading edge of a turbine blade. A novel film hole geometry using a circular exit shaped hole is proposed, and the influence of an existing sister holes’ technique is investigated. The results indicate that high film cooling effectiveness is achieved at higher blowing ratios, results of which are even greater when in the presence of discrete sister holes where film cooling effectiveness results reach a plateau. Furthermore, a decrease in the strength of the counter-rotating vortex pairs is evident, which results in more attached coolant to the plate’s surface and a reduction in aerodynamic losses. Modifications are made to the spanwise and streamwise locations of the sister holes around the conventional cylindrical hole geometry. It is found that the spanwise variations have a significant influence on the film cooling effectiveness results, while only minor effects are observed for the streamwise variations. Positioning the sister holes in locations farther from the centerline increases the lateral spreading of the coolant air over the plate’s surface. This result is further verified through the flow structure analysis. Combinations of sister holes are joined with the primary injection hole to produce innovative variant sister shaped single-holes. The jet lift-off is significantly decreased for the downstream and up/downstream configurations of the proposed scheme for the flat plate film cooling. These schemes have shown notable film cooling improvements whereby more lateral distribution of coolant is obtained and less penetration of coolant into the mainstream flow is observed. The performance of the sister shaped single-holes are evaluated at the leading edge of a turbine blade. At the higher blowing ratios, a noticeable improvement in film cooling performance including the effectiveness and the lateral spread of the cooling air jet has been observed for the upstream and up/downstream schemes, in particular on the suction side. It is determined that the mixing of the coolant with the high mainstream flow at the leading edge of the blade is considerably decreased for the upstream and up/downstream configurations and more adhered coolant to the blade’s surface is achieved.


Author(s):  
Zhongran Chi ◽  
Chang Han ◽  
Xueying Li ◽  
Jing Ren ◽  
Hongde Jiang

A tripod cylindrical film hole with asymmetric side holes is studied numerically and experimentally on a flat plate for higher film cooling effectiveness. Firstly, the influences of geometrical parameters are studied and the optimum configurations of the asymmetric tripod hole are found in a DoE optimization study based on an improved numerical model for film cooling prediction, in which more than one hundred 3D CFD simulations are carried out. Then one optimum configuration of the asymmetric tripod hole is examined experimentally using pressure-sensitive paint (PSP) measurements, and compared against the experimental results of the simple cylindrical film hole and a well-designed shaped film hole. The flow and heat transfer characteristics of the asymmetric tripod holes were explored from the DoE results. The side holes can form a shear vortex system or an anti-kidney vortex system when proper spanwise distances of them are adopted, which laterally transports the coolant and form a favorable coolant coverage. According to the experimental results, the cooling performance of the optimized asymmetric tripod hole is significantly better than that of the simple cylindrical hole, especially at high blowing ratios. And the optimized asymmetric tripod hole can provide almost the same or even higher film cooling effectiveness on the flat plate compared with the shaped hole in the same flow conditions.


Author(s):  
Eiji Sakai ◽  
Toshihiko Takahashi

Turbulence promoters such as ribs inside turbine blade coolant channels are used to improve convective cooling but at the same time could influence external film cooling performance. The effects of rib orientation and rib position on film cooling performance are experimentally and numerically studied with a flat plate configuration in which external (main) flow and internal (secondary) flow are oriented perpendicular to each other. In the experiment, temperature fields are measured by thermo-couples varying blowing ratio at constant Reynolds number of main and secondary flows. To obtain detailed information about flow fields, Reynolds Averaged Navier Stokes (RANS) simulation and Detached Eddy Simulation (DES) are also performed using a commercial code Fluent. Temperature measured shows that rib orientation has a strong influence on film effectiveness. With forward-oriented ribs, higher film effectiveness is observed compared to the reference case without ribs. On the contrary with inverse-oriented ribs, lower film effectiveness is observed. The difference comes from the flow structure in the film cooling hole. With the forward-oriented ribs, straight stream lines are observed in the cooling hole, while with the inverse-oriented ribs, helical stream lines are observed. Due to the helical stream lines in the hole, ejection angle of the secondary flow to the main stream becomes large, resulting in so called lift-off and lower film effectiveness.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Landfester ◽  
Gunther Müller ◽  
Robert Krewinkel ◽  
Clemens Domnick ◽  
Martin Böhle

Abstract This comparative study is concerned with the advances in nozzle guide vane (NGV) design developments and their influence on the film cooling performance by injecting coolant through the purge slot. An experimental study compares the film cooling effectiveness as well as the aerodynamic effects for different purge slot configurations on both a flat and an axisymmetrically contoured endwall of a NGV. While the flat endwall cascade was equipped with four cylindrical vanes, the contoured endwall cascade consisted of four modern NGVs which represent state-of-the-art high-pressure turbine design standards. Geometric variations, e.g. the purge slot width and injection angle, as well as different blowing ratios (BR) at an engine-like density ratio (DR = 1.6) were realized to investigate the real-life effect of thermal expansion, design modifications and the interaction between secondary flow and coolant. The mainstream flow parameters were set to meet real engine conditions with regard to Reynolds and Mach numbers. The Pressure Sensitive Paint (PSP) technique was used to determine the adiabatic film cooling effectiveness. Five-hole probe measurements (DR = 1.0) were performed to measure the flow field with its characteristic vortex structures as well as the loss distribution in the vane wake region. For a more profound insight into the origin and development of the secondary flows, oil dye visualizations were carried out on both endwalls. The measurement results will be discussed based on a side-by-side comparison of the distribution of film cooling effectiveness on the endwall, its area-averaged values as well as the two-dimensional distribution of total pressure losses and the secondary flow field. The results of this study show that the advances in NGV design development have had a significantly positive influence on the distribution of the coolant. This has to be attributed to lesser disturbance of the coolant propagation by secondary flow for the optimized NGV design, since the design features are intended to suppress the formation of secondary flow. In contrast to the results of the cylindrical profile, sufficient cooling can be already provided with a perpendicular injection in the case of the modern NGV. It is therefore advisable to take these effects into account when designing the film cooling system of a modern high-pressure turbine.


Author(s):  
Sanga Lee ◽  
Dong-Ho Rhee ◽  
Kwanjung Yee

In spite of a myriad of researches on the optimal shape of film cooling holes, only a few attempts have been made to optimize the hole arrangement for film cooling so far. Moreover, although the general scale of film cooling hole is so small that manufacturing tolerance has substantial effects on the cooling performance of turbine, the researches on this issue are even scarcer. If it is possible to obtain optimal hole arrangement which not only improve the film cooling performance but also is robust to the manufacturing tolerance, then overall cooling performance of a turbine would become more reliable and useful from the practical point of view. To this end, the present study proposed a robust design optimization procedure which takes the manufacturing uncertainties into account. The procedure was subsequently applied to the film cooling holes on high pressure turbine nozzle pressure side to obtain the robust array shape under the uncertainty of the manufacturing tolerance. First, the array of the holes was parameterized by 5 design variables using the newly suggested shape functions, and 2 representative factors were considered for the manufacturing tolerance of the film cooling hole. Probabilistic process that consists of Kriging surrogate model and Monte Carlo Simulation with descriptive sampling method was coupled with the design optimization process using Genetic Algorithm. Through this, film cooling hole array which shows the high performance, yet robust to the manufacturing tolerance was obtained, and the effects of the manufacturing tolerance on the cooling performance was carefully investigated. As a result, the region where the film cooling effectiveness is noticeable, as well as the maximum width of the variation of the film cooling effectiveness were reduced through optimization, and it is also confirmed that the tolerance of the holes near the leading edge is more influential to the cooling performance because the film cooling effectiveness is more sensitive to the manufacturing tolerance of the leading edge than that of the trailing edge.


Author(s):  
Kenichiro Takeishi ◽  
Yutaka Oda ◽  
Shinpei Kondo

This paper describes an experimental study on the film cooling effectiveness of circular and fan-shaped film cooling holes with a swirling film coolant injected through a flat plate and the endwall of a high-loaded first nozzle. The experiments were conducted using a flat plate wind tunnel and a two-dimensional vane cascade, which is designed based on the first-stage vane of an Energy Efficient Engine (E3) studied under a NASA project. The film cooling effectiveness on a flat plate wind tunnel and the endwall of the enlarged first nozzle of the E3 turbine was measured using pressure sensitive paint (PSP) techniques. The experimental results indicate that the film cooling effectiveness of a circular hole improved by increasing the angle θ of two impinging jets inside the cavity, which are used both for cooling the internal wall and generating a swirling motion in the film coolant. In contrast, it was found that there exist optimal jet angles of θ = 20° for a circular film cooling hole, θ = 5–10° for a flat plate wind tunnel test, and θ = 15° for the cascade test conducted using a fan-shaped film cooling hole. Thus the new film cooling method using swirling cooling air has been demonstrated to maintain high film cooling effectiveness even under such a complicated flow field.


Author(s):  
Diganta P. Narzary ◽  
Christopher LeBlanc ◽  
Srinath Ekkad

Film cooling performance of two hole geometries is evaluated on a flat plate surface with steady-state IR (infrared thermography) technique. The base geometry is a simple cylindrical hole design inclined at 30° from the surface with pitch-to-diameter ratio of 3.0. The second geometry is an anti-vortex design where the two side holes, also of the same diameter, branch out from the root at 15° angle. The pitch-to-diameter ratio is 6.0 between the main holes. The mainstream Reynolds number is 3110 based on the coolant hole diameter. Two secondary fluids — air and carbon-dioxide — were used to study the effects of coolant-to-mainstream density ratio (DR = 0.95 and 1.45) on film cooling effectiveness. Several blowing ratios in the range 0.5 –4.0 were investigated independently at the two density ratios. Results indicate significant improvement in effectiveness with anti-vortex holes compared to cylindrical holes at all the blowing ratios studied. At any given blowing ratio, the anti-vortex hole design uses 50% less coolant and provides at least 30–40% higher cooling effectiveness. The use of relatively dense secondary fluid improves effectiveness immediately downstream of the anti-vortex holes but leads to poor performance downstream.


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