Comparison of Trip-Strip/Impingement/Dimple Cooling Concepts at High Reynolds Numbers

Abstract

Modern industrial combustor liners employ various cooling schemes such as, but not limited to, impingement arrays, trip-strips, and film cooling. With an increasing demand for a higher turbine inlet temperatures and lower emissions, there is less air available to cool the combustor liner. To ensure the required liner durability without compromising engine performance more innovative cooling schemes are required. In the present work, three different cooling concepts, i.e., strip-strips, jet array impingement and dimples, operating at unusually high flow conditions were investigated. There is very little data available in the open literature for the aforementioned cooling schemes in the indicated Reynolds Number range (ReDh>60,000). The wall flow friction characteristics as well as the local heat transfer were measured. The heat transfer coefficients were obtained using a transient liquid crystal technique. The test configurations consisted of a 90° trip-strip surface (only one side turbulated), a fixed staggered array with varying impingement hole sizes, and a fixed staggered dimple pattern. For the Reynolds numbers investigated (26,000< ReDh <360,000), the jet-impingement cooling provided the highest average heat transfer enhancement followed by the trip-strip channel, and then by the dimpled channel. In terms of the overall thermal performance, the dimpled channel tends to stand out as the most effective cooling scheme. This is consistent with findings from other investigators at lower Reynolds numbers.