Local Heat Transfer in Internally Cooled Turbine Airfoil Leading Edge Regions: Part II—Impingement Cooling With Film Coolant Extraction

Abstract

An experimental study has been designed and performed to measure very localized internal heat transfer characteristics in large-scale models of turbine blade impingement-cooled leading edge regions that allow extraction, or bleed-off, of a portion of the internal cooling flow to provide leading edge film cooling along the blade external surface. The internal impingement air is provided by a single line of equally spaced multiple jets, aimed at the leading edge apex and generally exiting, minus the bleed-off flow, in the opposite or chordwise direction. The film coolant flow extraction takes place through two lines of holes, one each on the blade suction side and the blade pressure side, both fairly close to the airfoil leading edge. Detailed two-dimensional local surface Nusselt number distributions have been obtained through the use of aerodynamically steady but thermally transient tests employing temperature-indicating coatings. The thin coatings are sprayed directly on the test surfaces, and are observed during a test transient with automated computer vision and data acquisition systems. A wide range of parameter combinations of interest in cooled airfoil practice is covered in the test matrix, including combinations of variations in jet Reynolds number, airfoil leading edge sharpness, jet pitch-to-diameter ratio, and jet nozzle-to-apex travel distance. Measured local Nusselt numbers at each chordwise location back from the stagnation line have been used to calculate both the spanwise-average Nusselt numbers and spanwise Nusselt number gradients as functions of chordwise position. The results without film coolant extraction, presented in the Part I companion paper, are used as a basis of comparison to determine the additional effects of the film cooling bleed. Results indicate that heat transfer is primarily dependent on jet Reynolds number with smaller influences from the flow extraction rate. The results also suggest that changes in the spanwise alignment of the impingement nozzles relative to the position of the film cooling holes can cause significant variations in leading edge metal temperatures.