Assessment of Various Film Cooling Configurations Including Shaped and Compound Angle Holes Based on Large Scale Experiments

Abstract

The demand of improved thermal efficiency and high power output of modern gas turbine engines leads to extremely high turbine inlet temperatures and pressure ratios. Sophisticated cooling schemes including film cooling are widely used to protect vanes and blades from failure and to achieve high component life-times. Besides standard cylindrical cooling hole geometry, shaped injection holes are used in modern film cooling applications in order to improve cooling performance and to reduce the necessary cooling air flow. However, complex hole shapes may lead to manufacturing constraints and high costs. This paper evaluates some film cooling injection geometry with different complexity. The comparison is based on measurements of the adiabatic film cooling effectiveness and the heat transfer coefficient downstream of the injection location. In total, 4 different film cooling hole configurations are investigated: A single row of fanshaped holes with and without a compound injection angle, a double row of cylindrical holes and a double row of discrete slots, both in staggered arrangement. All holes are inclined 45° with respect to the model’s surface. During the measurements, the influence of coolant blowing ratio is determined. Additionally, the influence of cooling air feeding direction into the fanshaped holes with the compound injection angle is investigated. An infrared thermography measurement system is used for highly resolved mappings of the model’s surface temperature. Accurate local temperature data is achieved by an In-Situ calibration procedure with the help of single thermocouples embedded in the test plate. A subsequent finite elements heat conduction analysis takes three-dimensional heat fluxes inside the test plate into account.