Film-cooling performance in supersonic flows: effect of shock impingement

Abstract

High pressure turbine stages work in transonic regimes and then shock waves, shed by the trailing edge, impinge on the suction side modifying the flow structures. Gas turbine entry temperature is much higher than the allowable material limit and the hot components can survive only using advanced film-cooling systems. Unfortunately these systems are designed without taking into account the interaction with the shock waves and this article would like to address this problem and to evaluate if this assumption is correct or not. A correct prediction and understanding of the interaction between the ejected coolant and the shock waves is crucial in order to achieve an optimal distribution of the coolant and to increase the components’ life. In this work, the numerical investigation of a film-cooling test case, investigated experimentally by the University of Karlsruhe, is shown. An in-house computational fluid dynamics solver is used for the numerical analysis. The test rig consists of a converging–diverging nozzle that accelerates the incoming flow up to supersonic conditions and an oblique shock is generated at the nozzle exit section. Three cases have been studied, where the cooling holes have been positioned before, near and after the shock impingement. The results obtained considering four blowing ratios are presented and compared with the available experimental data. The local adiabatic effectiveness is affected by the shock–coolant interaction and this effect has been observed for all the blowing ratios investigated. A similar trend is observed in the experimental data even if the numerical simulations over-predict the impact of the interaction.