Crossover Jet Impingement in a Rib-Roughened Trailing-Edge Cooling Channel

Abstract

Airfoil trailing-edge cooling is the main focus of this study. The test section was made up of two adjacent trapezoidal channels, simulating the trailing-edge cooling cavity of a gas turbine airfoil and its neighboring cavity. Eleven racetrack-shaped holes were drilled on the partition wall between the two channels to produce 11 cross-over jets that impinged on the rib-roughened wall of the trailing-edge channel. The jets, after impinging on their respective target surface, turned toward the trailing-edge channel exit. Smooth target wall, as a baseline case, as well as four rib angles with the flow of 0 deg, 45 deg, 90 deg, and 135 deg are investigated. Cross-over holes axes were on the trailing-edge channel center plane, i.e., no tilting of the cross-over jets. Steady-state liquid crystal thermography technique was used in this study for a range of jet Reynolds number of 10,000–35,000. The test results are compared with the numerical results obtained from the Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes and energy equation. Closure was attained by k–ω with shear stress transport (SST) turbulence model. The entire test rig (supply and trailing-edge channels) was meshed with variable density hexagonal meshes. The numerical work was performed for boundary conditions identical to those of the tests. In addition to the impingement heat transfer coefficients, the numerical results provided the mass flow rates through individual cross-over holes. This study concluded that: (a) the local Nusselt numbers correlate well with the local jet Reynolds numbers, (b) 90 deg rib arrangement, that is, when the cross-over jet axis was parallel to the rib longitudinal axis, produced higher heat transfer coefficients, compared to other rib angles, and (c) numerical heat transfer results were generally in good agreement with the test results. The overall difference between the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and test results was about 10%.