Predicting Adiabatic Film Effectiveness of a Turbine Vane by Two-Equation Turbulence Models

Author(s):  
Prasert Prapamonthon ◽  
Huazhao Xu ◽  
Jianhua Wang ◽  
Ge Li

The thermal efficiency of gas turbine engines increases with turbine inlet temperature (TIT) directly. However, the TIT is limited by the allowable temperature of current blade materials. Film cooling technique is an effective method to maintain turbine vane working smoothly under high TIT conditions. The adiabatic film effectiveness has been widely employed to understand film cooling mechanism. Therefore, the prediction of the adiabatic effectiveness of gas turbine engines under real operating conditions is essential. The showerhead film cooled turbine vane reported by L. P. Timko (NASA CR-168289) is adopted in the present study. There are two rows of film holes on the leading edge, three rows on the pressure side, and two rows on the suction side. All holes are cylindrical, which are placed at an angle of 45 degrees to the vane surface in the span-wise direction. This numerical investigation discusses the influences of free stream turbulence intensity on the adiabatic film effectiveness in the vane leading edge region and its vicinity. Five two-equation turbulence models based on Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) are employed to predict the adiabatic film effectiveness under real operating conditions at a blowing ratio (BR) of 1.41 and three free stream turbulence intensities (Tu=3.3, 10, and 20%). The adiabatic film effectiveness on the vane surface at 8, 52.5, and 89% span in an x/C range between −0.4 and 0.4 is presented. Obviously, the numerical results predicted by all five models show that on the suction side, the increasing free stream turbulence intensity can reduce film effectiveness except at 8% span. On the pressure side, the RNG k-ε, Realizable k-ε and SST k-ω models predict the same trend of the adiabatic film effectiveness, especially the RNG k-ε and SST k-ω models. Those three models predict that the locally adiabatic film effectiveness (especially near film holes) can be improved when turbulence intensity increases. However, at a span of 89% within the x/C range between −0.4 and −0.2, all k-ε models and SST k-ω model predict that the increase of turbulence intensity can reduce the adiabatic film effectiveness. In addition, the film effectiveness contours show a significant variation of film effectiveness predicted by the five turbulence models on the leading edge when turbulence intensity increases. For the near-pressure side, all models except the Standard k-ω model predict that the high turbulence intensity can reduce the film spreading from film holes dramatically.


Volume 1 ◽  
2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhenxing Han ◽  
Shi Liu ◽  
Kiyoshi Suenaga

This paper studies the effect of two given free-stream turbulence intensities on film cooling at different blowing ratios on one cascade, made up of five blades. Experiments on the suction side were done at three different blowing ratios 0.5,1.0 and 1.5; those on the pressure side were done at four different blowing ratios, 0.5,0.75,1.5 and 1.75. The two given free stream turbulence intensities are 0.5% and 5% respectively. In these experiments, we adopted infrared thermography to capture the images of temperature distributions on blade surface. According to the experimental results, the turbulence acts on the effectiveness distributions differently on the pressure side and suction side due to the existence of blade curvature. Bigger turbulence intensity can worsen the cooling effect on both the suction side and the pressure side.



Author(s):  
Joshua B. Anderson ◽  
James R. Winka ◽  
David G. Bogard ◽  
Michael E. Crawford

The leading edge of a turbine vane is subject to some of the highest temperature loading within an engine, and an accurate understanding of leading edge film coolant behavior is essential for modern engine design. Although there have been many investigations of the adiabatic effectiveness for showerhead film cooling of a vane leading edge region, there have been no previous studies in which individual rows of the showerhead were tested with the explicit intent of validating superposition models. For the current investigation, a series of adiabatic effectiveness experiments were performed with a five-row and three-row showerhead. The experiments were repeated separately with each individual row of holes active. This allowed evaluation of superposition methods on both the suction side of the vane, which was moderately convex, and the pressure side of the vane, which was mildly concave. Superposition was found to accurately predict performance on the suction side of the vane at lower momentum flux ratios, but not at higher momentum flux ratios. On the pressure side of the vane the superposition predictions were consistently lower than measured values, with significant errors occurring at the higher momentum flux ratios. Reasons for the under-prediction by superposition analysis are presented.



Author(s):  
Hossein Nadali Najafabadi ◽  
Matts Karlsson ◽  
Mats Kinell ◽  
Esa Utriainen

Improving film cooling performance of turbine vanes and blades is often achieved through application of multiple arrays of cooling holes on the suction side, the showerhead region and the pressure side. This study investigates the pressure side cooling under the influence of single and multiple rows of cooling in the presence of a showerhead from a heat transfer coefficient augmentation perspective. Experiments are conducted on a prototype turbine vane working at engine representative conditions. Transient IR thermography is used to measure time-resolved surface temperature and the semi-infinite method is utilized to calculate the heat transfer coefficient on a low conductive material. Investigations are performed for cylindrical and fan-shaped holes covering blowing ratio 0.6 and 1.8 at density ratio of about unity. The freestream turbulence is approximately 5% close to the leading edge. The resulting heat transfer coefficient enhancement, the ratio of HTC with to that without film cooling, from different case scenarios have been compared to showerhead cooling only. Findings of the study highlight the importance of showerhead cooling to be used with additional row of cooling on the pressure side in order to reduce heat transfer coefficient enhancement. In addition, it is shown that extra rows of cooling will not significantly influence heat transfer augmentation, regardless of the cooling hole shape.



Author(s):  
V. P. Maslov ◽  
B. I. Mineev ◽  
K. N. Pichkov ◽  
A. N. Secundov ◽  
A. N. Vorobiev ◽  
...  

A hot-wire technique was used to measure turbulence characteristics in the vicinity of the stagnation line of circular cylinders and a turbine blade model (a chord length of 1 metre). Heat transfer intensity at the stagnation line of the cylinders was also measured by on-surface probes. The experiments were carried out in a wide range of the Reynolds number based on the blade leading edge/cylinder diameter, D (Re = 2.103–2.106) and integral length scale of free-stream turbulence, Le (Le = 0.1–10D) at two values of free stream turbulence intensity, Tu (Tu = 0.02 and 0.10). Along with the experimental data results of the 2D RANS computations are presented of the flow and heat transfer at the circular cylinder with the use of two turbulence models: a two-equation, k-ω SST, model of Menter, and a new two-equation, ν1-L, model developed in the course of the present study.



2003 ◽  
Vol 125 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Saumweber ◽  
Achmed Schulz ◽  
Sigmar Wittig

A comprehensive set of generic experiments has been conducted to investigate the effect of elevated free-stream turbulence on film cooling performance of shaped holes. A row of three cylindrical holes as a reference case, and two rows of holes with expanded exits, a fanshaped (expanded in lateral direction), and a laidback fanshaped hole (expanded in lateral and streamwise direction) have been employed. With an external (hot gas) Mach number of Mam=0.3 operating conditions are varied in terms of free-stream turbulence intensity (up to 11%), integral length scale at constant turbulence intensity (up to 3.5 hole inlet diameters), and blowing ratio. The temperature ratio is fixed at 0.59 leading to an enginelike density ratio of 1.7. The results indicate that shaped and cylindrical holes exhibit very different reactions to elevated free-stream turbulence levels. For cylindrical holes film cooling effectiveness is reduced with increased turbulence level at low blowing ratios whereas a small gain in effectiveness can be observed at high blowing ratios. For shaped holes, increased turbulence intensity is detrimental even for the largest blowing ratio M=2.5. In comparison to the impact of turbulence intensity the effect of varying the integral length scale is found to be of minor importance. Finally, the effect of elevated free-stream turbulence in terms of heat transfer coefficients was found to be much more pronounced for the shaped holes.



Author(s):  
Christian Saumweber ◽  
Achmed Schulz ◽  
Sigmar Wittig

A comprehensive set of generic experiments has been conducted to investigate the effect of elevated free-stream turbulence on film cooling performance of shaped holes. A row of three cylindrical holes as a reference case, and two rows of holes with expanded exits, a fanshaped (expanded in lateral direction), and a laidback fanshaped hole (expanded in lateral and streamwise direction) have been employed. With an external (hot gas) Mach number of Mam = 0.3 operating conditions are varied in terms of free-stream turbulence intensity (up to 11%), integral length scale at constant turbulence intensity (up to 3.5 hole inlet diameters), and blowing ratio. The temperature ratio is fixed at 0.59 leading to an engine-like density ratio of 1.7. The results indicate that shaped and cylindrical holes exhibit very different reactions to elevated free-stream turbulence levels. For cylindrical holes film cooling effectiveness is reduced with increased turbulence level at low blowing ratios whereas a small gain in effectiveness can be observed at high blowing ratios. For shaped holes, increased turbulence intensity is detrimental even for the largest blowing ratio (M = 2.5). In comparison to the impact of turbulence intensity the effect of varying the integral length scale is found to be of minor importance. Finally the effect of elevated free-stream turbulence in terms of heat transfer coefficients was found to be much more pronounced for the shaped holes.



2015 ◽  
Vol 137 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua B. Anderson ◽  
James R. Winka ◽  
David G. Bogard ◽  
Michael E. Crawford

The leading edge of a turbine vane is subject to some of the highest temperature loading within an engine, and an accurate understanding of leading edge film coolant behavior is essential for modern engine design. Although there have been many investigations of the adiabatic effectiveness for showerhead film cooling of a vane leading edge region, there have been no previous studies in which individual rows of the showerhead were tested with the explicit intent of validating superposition models. For the current investigation, a series of adiabatic effectiveness experiments were performed with a five-row and three-row showerhead. The experiments were repeated separately with each individual row of holes active. This allowed evaluation of superposition methods on both the suction side of the vane, which was moderately convex, and the pressure side of the vane, which was mildly concave. Superposition was found to accurately predict performance on the suction side of the vane at lower momentum flux ratios, but not at higher momentum flux ratios. On the pressure side of the vane, the superposition predictions were consistently lower than measured values, with significant errors occurring at the higher momentum flux ratios. Reasons for the underprediction by superposition analysis are presented.



Author(s):  
Joshua E. Bruce-Black ◽  
Frederick T. Davidson ◽  
David G. Bogard ◽  
David R. Johns

Turbine component film cooling is most effective when using a continuous slot to introduce coolant to the surface. However, this is not practical due to the structural weakness that would be inherent with a continuous slot. In this study, several slot-like designs are investigated to establish the film cooling effectiveness. These slot configurations extended only a partial distance through the simulated turbine vane wall, and were fed with impinging cylindrical holes. The configurations were studied on the suction side of a scaled-up turbine vane. In this study varying slot widths, discrete and continuous slots, and diffusing the coolant flow within the slot prior to it being emitted onto the surface of the vane were investigated. Rows of discrete round and shaped holes were also tested for comparison with the slots. The study of varying slot geometries showed that decreasing the width of the slots led to a substantial increase in adiabatic effectiveness. An internal coolant diffusion technique showed promise by maintaining performance levels while potentially providing a design configuration that more readily meets structural demands in real world operating conditions. The coolant flow characteristics were also studied through the use of thermal profiles measurements. These thermal profiles showed significant mainstream ingestion on the top surface of the slot prior to the coolant emitting onto the surface of the vane.



2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wim M. van Rees ◽  
Martijn X. van Rijsbergen ◽  
Gert Kuiper ◽  
Tom J. C. van Terwisga

Delayed sheet cavitation inception has occasionally been observed in the MARIN Depressurized Towing Tank (DTT). The problems are specifically related to the pressure side of model ship propellers, and occur despite the application of leading-edge roughness. As a consequence, no cavitation at all or cavitation on parts of the propeller blades is observed, in cases where cavitation in the cavitation tunnel or at full scale is present. In an exploratory investigation, the effect of several parameters that may influence cavitation inception is studied in the DTT. In particular, the influences of Reynolds number, free-stream turbulence and additional gas nuclei are investigated. It is concluded that the presence of sufficient gas nuclei is crucial for sheet cavitation inception, even if leading-edge roughness is applied. With additional nuclei in the propeller inflow, sheet cavitation inception in the DTT is no longer delayed with respect to the cavitation tunnel.



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