A Combined Experimental and Numerical Study of the Turbine Blade Tip Film Cooling Effectiveness Under Rotation Condition

Author(s):  
M. Rezasoltani ◽  
K. Lu ◽  
M. T. Schobeiri ◽  
J. C. Han

Detailed numerical and experimental investigations of film cooling effectiveness were conducted on the blade tips of the first rotor row pertaining to a three-stage research turbine. Four different blade tip ejection configurations were utilized to determine the impact of the hole arrangements on the film cooling effectiveness. plane tip with tip hole cooling, squealer tip with tip hole cooling, plane tip with pressure-side-edge compound angle hole cooling and squealer tip with pressure-side-edge compound angle hole cooling. To avoid rotor imbalance, every pair is installed radially. Film cooling effectiveness measurements were performed for three blowing ratios (M) of 0.75, 1.25 and 1.75. Film cooling data was also obtained for three rotational speeds; 3000 rpm (reference condition), 2550 rpm and 2000 rpm. Film cooling measurements were performed using pressure sensitive paint (PSP) technique. In a parallel effort, extensive numerical investigations of the above configurations were performed to give a better view of flow behavior using a commercially available code. The experimental investigations were performed in the three-stage multi-purpose turbine research facility at the Turbomachinery Performance and Flow Research Laboratory (TPFL), Texas A&M University.

2015 ◽  
Vol 137 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohsen Rezasoltani ◽  
Kun Lu ◽  
Meinhard T. Schobeiri ◽  
Je-Chin Han

Detailed numerical and experimental investigations of film cooling effectiveness were conducted on the blade tips of the first rotor row pertaining to a three-stage research turbine. Four different blade tip ejection configurations were utilized to determine the impact of the hole arrangements on the film cooling effectiveness. Plane tip with tip hole cooling, squealer tip with tip hole cooling, plane tip with pressure side (PS) edge compound angle hole cooling, and squealer tip with PS-edge compound angle hole cooling. To avoid rotor imbalance, every pair is installed radially. Film cooling effectiveness measurements were performed for three blowing ratios (M) of 0.75, 1.25, and 1.75. Film cooling data was also obtained for three rotational speeds; 3000 rpm (reference condition), 2550 rpm and 2000 rpm. Film cooling measurements were performed using pressure sensitive paint (PSP) technique. In a parallel effort, extensive numerical investigations of the above configurations were performed to give a better view of flow behavior using a commercially available code. The experimental investigations were performed in the three-stage multipurpose turbine research facility at the Turbomachinery Performance and Flow Research Laboratory (TPFL), Texas A&M University.


Author(s):  
Xiang Zhang ◽  
Zhong Yang ◽  
Shuqing Tian ◽  
Haiteng Ma

Detailed numerical investigations of film cooling effectiveness are conducted for the holes on the tip cavity floor and near the tip pressure side. The tested blade tip is a squealer with the trailing rim wall cut to allow the accumulated coolant in the cavity to escape and cool the trailing edge. The heat transfer coefficients on the un-cooled flat and cutback squealer blade tip are studied with numerical and experimental methods. Three dust purging holes with different diameters are arranged along the camber line, which forms the basic cooled case (PG case). Additional six tip cavity holes are arranged on cavity floor near the suction side rim (PG-TF case). Another row of angled twenty-one holes is arranged along the pressure side just below the tip based on the PG case (PG-PSF case). The coolant supply pressure ratios are controlled to be 1, 1.11, and 1.22 respectively, offering local blowing ratio from 0 to 2.5. Results show that the dust purging flow cooling performance increases with the cavity depth. Discrete holes on the cavity floor offer a well-distributed coolant, which refines the cooling effect on the cavity floor. The PG-PSF case with cooling holes on the pressure side has the best overall cooling performance with more coolant consumed, when PR ≥ 1.22. However, maintaining the same coolant mass flow the PG-TF case has the best cooling performance, and the margin between PG-TF and PG-PSF case decreases with mass flow. The moving shroud cases reveal that blade movement will cause significant negative impacts on film cooling effectiveness.


Author(s):  
S. Naik ◽  
A. Lerch

This paper investigates the aerodynamic and film cooling characteristics of a first stage turbine high lift blade. The blade operating conditions are representative of those normally found in a heavy-duty gas turbine. The airfoil incorporates several rows of film cooling holes located at various axial positions along the airfoil chord and the blade tip. Additionally the impact of the platform leading edge rim purge flow has been investigated and its interaction with the airfoil aerodynamic and film cooling characteristics. The film cooling holes are geometrically three-dimensional in shape, and depending on the location on the airfoil, they consist of various fan shapes, which are either compounded or in-line with the external main flow direction. Numerical studies and experimental investigations in a linear cascade have been conducted for a range of exit Mach and Reynolds numbers. The influence and sensitivity of the coolant ejected from the airfoil, tip and the platform rim purges on the overall airfoil film cooling has been investigated for a range of operating conditions. The measured film cooling effectiveness on the airfoil, blade tip and platform surfaces compared well with the predictions. The suction side film cooling effectiveness, which consisted of two pre-throat film rows, proved to be very effective up to the suction side trailing edge. The impact of variations in the airfoil cooling flows showed that the film cooling was relatively in-sensitive on the suction side. However, on the blade tip, it was found that the film cooling characteristics are strongly dependent on the clearances and the tip coolant ejection rate. On the platform surface, the impact of variations in the rim purge flows was evident, but proved not to alter the global film cooling characteristics on neither the airfoil nor the platform surfaces significantly.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Izhar Ullah ◽  
Sulaiman M. Alsaleem ◽  
Lesley M. Wright ◽  
Chao-Cheng Shiau ◽  
Je-Chin Han

Abstract This work is an experimental study of film cooling effectiveness on a blade tip in a stationary, linear cascade. The cascade is mounted in a blowdown facility with controlled inlet and exit Mach numbers of 0.29 and 0.75, respectively. The free stream turbulence intensity is measured to be 13.5 % upstream of the blade’s leading edge. A flat tip design is studied, having a tip gap of 1.6%. The blade tip is designed to have 15 shaped film cooling holes along the near-tip pressure side (PS) surface. Fifteen vertical film cooling holes are placed on the tip near the pressure side. The cooling holes are divided into a 2-zone plenum to locally maintain the desired blowing ratios based on the external pressure field. Two coolant injection scenarios are considered by injecting coolant through the tip holes only and both tip and PS surface holes together. The blowing ratio (M) and density ratio (DR) effects are studied by testing at blowing ratios of 0.5, 1.0, and 1.5 and three density ratios of 1.0, 1.5, and 2.0. Three different foreign gases are used to create density ratio effect. Over-tip flow leakage is also studied by measuring the static pressure distributions on the blade tip using the pressure sensitive paint (PSP) measurement technique. In addition, detailed film cooling effectiveness is acquired to quantify the parametric effect of blowing ratio and density ratio on a plane tip design. Increasing the blowing ratio and density ratio resulted in increased film cooling effectiveness at all injection scenarios. Injecting coolant on the PS and the tip surface also resulted in reduced leakage over the tip. The conclusions from this study will provide the gas turbine designer with additional insight on controlling different parameters and strategically placing the holes during the design process.


2008 ◽  
Vol 131 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhihong Gao ◽  
Diganta P. Narzary ◽  
Je-Chin Han

The film-cooling effectiveness on the surface of a high pressure turbine blade is measured using the pressure sensitive paint technique. Compound angle laidback fan-shaped holes are used to cool the blade surface with four rows on the pressure side and two rows on the suction side. The coolant injects to one side of the blade, either pressure side or suction side. The presence of wake due to the upstream vanes is simulated by placing a periodic set of rods upstream of the test blade. The wake rods can be clocked by changing their stationary positions to simulate progressing wakes. The effect of wakes is recorded at four phase locations along the pitchwise direction. The freestream Reynolds number, based on the axial chord length and the exit velocity, is 750,000. The inlet and exit Mach numbers are 0.27 and 0.44, respectively, resulting in a pressure ratio of 1.14. Five average blowing ratios ranging from 0.4 to 1.5 are tested. Results reveal that the tip-leakage vortices and endwall vortices sweep the coolant on the suction side to the midspan region. The compound angle laidback fan-shaped holes produce a good film coverage on the suction side except for the regions affected by the secondary vortices. Due to the concave surface, the coolant trace is short and the effectiveness level is low on the pressure surface. However, the pressure side acquires a relatively uniform film coverage with the multiple rows of cooling holes. The film-cooling effectiveness increases with the increasing average blowing ratio for either side of coolant ejection. The presence of stationary upstream wake results in lower film-cooling effectiveness on the blade surface. The compound angle shaped holes outperform the compound angle cylindrical holes by the elevated film-cooling effectiveness, particularly at higher blowing ratios.


Author(s):  
Jae Su Kwak ◽  
Je-Chin Han

The detailed distributions of heat transfer coefficient and film cooling effectiveness on a gas turbine blade tip were measured using a hue detection based transient liquid crystal technique. Tests were performed on a five-bladed linear cascade with blow down facility. The blade was a 2-dimensional model of a first stage gas turbine rotor blade with a profile of the GE-E3 aircraft gas turbine engine rotor blade. The Reynolds number based on cascade exit velocity and axial chord length was 1.1 × 106 and the total turning angle of the blade was 97.7°. The overall pressure ratio was 1.32 and the inlet and exit Mach number were 0.25 and 0.59, respectively. The turbulence intensity level at the cascade inlet was 9.7%. The blade model was equipped with a single row of film cooling holes at both the tip portion along the camber line and near the tip region of the pressure-side. All measurements were made at the three different tip gap clearances of 1%, 1.5%, and 2.5% of blade span and the three blowing ratios of 0.5, 1.0, and 2.0. Results showed that, in general, heat transfer coefficient and film effectiveness increased with increasing tip gap clearance. As blowing ratio increased, heat transfer coefficient decreased, while film effectiveness increased. Results also showed that adding pressure-side coolant injection would further decrease blade tip heat transfer coefficient but increase film effectiveness.


Author(s):  
Zhongran Chi ◽  
Haiqing Liu ◽  
Shusheng Zang

Film cooling of 1st stage rotor blades strongly relates to the aerodynamic performance and life expectation of gas turbine. In this piece of work, a parametric study was carried out based on 3D RANS CFD methods to systematically investigate both cooling performance and aerodynamic loss of various film holes’ arrangements on the pressure side (PS) of a realistic rotor blade. In each CFD case, cylindrical film holes were arranged in one row with P/D around 4.0. More than one hundred CFD cases were carried out with various dimensionless streamwise locations (0.1, 0.2, ..., and 0.7), compound angles (−60°, −30°, ..., and 90°), and relative coolant massflows (0.2%, 0.3%, 0.45%, 0.7%, and 1.0% of mainstream massflow). Detailed distributions of adiabatic film cooling effectiveness on blade surface and aerodynamic loss with film cooling were computed for each case. It was found that coolant massflow was the decisive factor of aerodynamic efficiency φ. For near-LE film holes, −60° compound angle gave higher and more uniform η distributions at various coolant massflows. And the separation near LE could be suppressed, improving local cooling at near-hub on PS. For downstream film holes, 60° and −60° compound angles provided equivalent cooling performances, which were also better than other cases. The cooling characteristics of film holes with −30° compound angle were more susceptible to both coolant massflow and the location of ejection, which was mainly because of the blow-off and reattachment of coolant jets. For the cases with 90° compound angle, the distributions of η were generally similar, and the values increased monotonically as coolant massflows get larger.


Author(s):  
Zhihong Gao ◽  
Diganta P. Narzary ◽  
Je-Chin Han

The film cooling effectiveness on the surface of a high pressure turbine blade is measured using the Pressure Sensitive Paint (PSP). Four rows of fan-shaped, laid-back compound angled cooling holes are distributed on the pressure side while two such rows are provided on the suction side of the blade. The coolant is only injected to either the pressure side or suction side of the blade at five average blowing ratios from 0.4 to 1.5. Presence of wake due to upstream vanes is simulated by placing a periodic set of rods upstream of the test blade. The wake rods can be clocked by changing their stationary positions to simulate a progressing wake. Effect of wake is recorded at four phase locations with equal intervals along the pitch-wise direction. The free stream Reynolds number, based on the axial chord length and the exit velocity, is 750,000 and the inlet and the exit Mach numbers are 0.27 and 0.44, respectively, resulting in a blade pressure ratio of 1.14. Results reveal that the tip leakage vortices and endwall vortices sweep the coolant film on the suction side to the midspan region. The fan-shaped, laid-back compound angled holes produce good coolant film coverage on the suction side except for those regions affected by the secondary vortices. Due to the concave surface, the coolant trace is short and effectiveness level is low on the pressure surface. However, the pressure side acquires relatively uniform film coverage with the design of multiple rows of cooling holes. The presence of stationary upstream wake results in lower film cooling effectiveness on the blade surface. Variation of blowing ratio from 0.4 to 1.5 shows steady increase in effectiveness on the pressure side or the suction side for a given wake rod phases locations. The compound angle shaped holes outperform the compound angle cylindrical holes by the elevated film cooling effectiveness particularly at higher blowing ratios.


2009 ◽  
Vol 131 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhihong Gao ◽  
Diganta Narzary ◽  
Shantanu Mhetras ◽  
Je-Chin Han

The influence of incidence angle on film-cooling effectiveness is studied for a cutback squealer blade tip. Three incidence angles are investigated −0 deg at design condition and ±5 deg at off-design conditions. Based on mass transfer analogy, the film-cooling effectiveness is measured with pressure sensitive paint techniques. The film-cooling effectiveness distribution on the pressure side near tip region, squealer cavity floor, and squealer rim tip is presented for the three incidence angles at varying blowing ratios. The average blowing ratio is controlled to be 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, and 2.0. One row of shaped holes is provided along the pressure side just below the tip; two rows of cylindrical film-cooling holes are arranged on the blade tip in such a way that one row is offset to the suction side profile and the other row is along the camber line. The pressure side squealer rim wall is cut near the trailing edge to allow the accumulated coolant in the cavity to escape and cool the tip trailing edge. The internal coolant-supply passages of the squealer tipped blade are modeled similar to those in the GE-E3 rotor blade. Test is done in a five-blade linear cascade in a blow-down facility with a tip gap clearance of 1.5% of the blade span. The Mach number and turbulence intensity level at the cascade inlet were 0.23 and 9.7%, respectively. It is observed that the incidence angle affects the coolant jet direction on the pressure side near tip region and the blade tip. The film-cooling effectiveness distribution is also altered. The peak of laterally averaged effectiveness is shifted upstream or downstream depending on the off-design incidence angle. The film cooling effectiveness inside the tip cavity can increase by 25% with the positive incidence angle. However, in general, the overall area-averaged film-cooling effectiveness is not significantly changed by the incidence angles in the range of study.


2011 ◽  
Vol 134 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Naik ◽  
C. Georgakis ◽  
T. Hofer ◽  
D. Lengani

This paper investigates the flow, heat transfer, and film cooling effectiveness of advanced high pressure turbine blade tips and endwalls. Two blade tip configurations have been studied, including a full rim squealer and a partial squealer with leading edge and trailing edge cutouts. Both blade tip configurations have pressure side film cooling and cooling air extraction through dust holes, which are positioned along the airfoil camber line on the tip cavity floor. The investigated clearance gap and the blade tip geometry are typical of that commonly found in the high pressure turbine blades of heavy-duty gas turbines. Numerical studies and experimental investigations in a linear cascade have been conducted at a blade exit isentropic Mach number of 0.8 and a Reynolds number of 9×105. The influence of the coolant flow ejected from the tip dust holes and the tip pressure side film holes has also been investigated. Both the numerical and experimental results showed that there is a complex aerothermal interaction within the tip cavity and along the endwall. This was evident for both tip configurations. Although the global heat transfer and film cooling characteristics of both blade tip configurations were similar, there were distinct local differences. The partial squealer exhibited higher local film cooling effectiveness at the trailing edge but also low values at the leading edge. For both tip configurations, the highest heat transfer coefficients were located on the suction side rim within the midchord region. However, on the endwall, the highest heat transfer rates were located close to the pressure side rim and along most of the blade chord. Additionally, the numerical results also showed that the coolant ejected from the blade tip dust holes partially impinges onto the endwall.


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