Film-Cooling Flowfields With Trenched Holes on an Endwall

2009 ◽  
Vol 131 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
N. Sundaram ◽  
K. A. Thole

The leading edge region along the endwall of a stator vane experiences high heat transfer rates resulting from the formation of horseshoe vortices. Typical gas turbine endwall designs include a leakage slot at the combustor-turbine interface as well as film-cooling holes. Past studies have documented the formation of a horseshoe vortex at the leading edge of a vane, but few studies have documented the flowfield in the presence of an interface slot and film-cooling jets. In this paper, a series of flowfield measurements is evaluated at the leading edge with configurations including a baseline with neither film-cooling holes nor an upstream slot, a row of film-cooling holes and an interface slot, and a row of film-cooling holes in a trench and an interface slot. The results indicated the formation of a second vortex present for the case with film-cooling holes and a slot relative to the baseline study. In addition, turbulence intensity levels as high as 50% were measured at the leading edge with film-cooling holes and a slot compared with the 30% measured for the baseline study. A trench was shown to provide improved overall cooling relative to the no trench configuration as more of the coolant stayed attached to the endwall surface with the trench.

Author(s):  
N. Sundaram ◽  
K. A. Thole

The leading edge region along the endwall of a stator vane experiences high heat transfer rates resulting from the formation of horseshoe vortices. Typical gas turbine endwall designs include a leakage slot at the combustor-turbine interface as well as film-cooling holes. Past studies have documented the formation of a horseshoe vortex at the leading edge of a vane, but few studies have documented the flowfield in the presence of an interface slot and film-cooling jets. In this paper, a series of flowfield measurements are evaluated at the leading edge with configurations including: a baseline with neither film-cooling holes nor an upstream slot, a row of film-cooling holes and an interface slot, and a row of film-cooling holes in a trench and an interface slot. The results indicated the formation of a second vortex present for the case with film-cooling holes and a slot relative to the baseline study. In addition, turbulence intensity levels as high as 50% were measured at the leading edge with film-cooling holes and a slot compared to the 30% measured for the baseline study. A trench was shown to provide improved overall cooling relative to the no trench configuration as more of the coolant stayed attached to the endwall surface with the trench.


2008 ◽  
Vol 130 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
N. Sundaram ◽  
K. A. Thole

The endwall of a first-stage vane experiences high heat transfer and low adiabatic effectiveness levels because of high turbine operating temperatures and formation of leading edge vortices. These vortices lift the coolant off the endwall and pull the hot mainstream gases toward it. The region of focus for this study is the vane-endwall junction region near the stagnation location where cooling is very difficult. Two different film-cooling hole modifications, namely, trenches and bumps, were evaluated to improve the cooling in the leading edge region. This study uses a large-scale turbine vane cascade with a single row of axial film-cooling holes at the leading edge of the vane endwall. Individual hole trenches and row trenches were placed along the complete row of film-cooling holes. Two-dimensional semi-elliptically shaped bumps were also evaluated by placing the bumps upstream and downstream of the film-cooling row. Tests were carried out for different trench depths and bump heights under varying blowing ratios. The results indicated that a row trench placed along the row of film-cooling holes showed a greater enhancement in adiabatic effectiveness levels when compared to individual hole trenches and bumps. All geometries considered produced an overall improvement to adiabatic effectiveness levels.


Author(s):  
N. Sundaram ◽  
K. A. Thole

The endwall of a first stage vane experiences high heat transfer and low adiabatic effectiveness levels because of high turbine operating temperatures and formation of leading edge vortices. These vortices lift the coolant off the endwall and pull the hot mainstream gases towards it. The region of focus for this study is the vane-endwall junction region near the stagnation location where cooling is very difficult. Two different film-cooling hole modifications, namely trenches and bumps, were evaluated to improve the cooling in the leading edge region. This study uses a large-scale turbine vane cascade with a single row of axial film-cooling holes at the leading edge of the vane endwall. Individual hole trenches and row trenches were placed along the complete row of film-cooling holes. Two-dimensional semi-elliptically shaped bumps were also evaluated by placing the bumps upstream and downstream of the film-cooling row. Tests were carried out for different trench depths and bump heights under varying blowing ratios. The results indicated that a row trench placed along the row of film-cooling holes showed a greater enhancement in adiabatic effectiveness levels when compared to individual hole trenches and bumps. All geometries considered produced an overall improvement to adiabatic effectiveness levels.


Author(s):  
Jun Su Park ◽  
Dong Hyun Lee ◽  
Hyung Hee Cho ◽  
Dong-Ho Rhee ◽  
Shin-Hyung Kang

Detailed heat/mass transfer coefficients and film-cooling effectiveness were measured on the tip and inner rim surfaces of a rotor blade with a squealer rim. The blade was a two-dimensional version of a modern first-stage gas turbine rotor blade with a squealer rim. The experimental apparatus was equipped with a linear cascade of three blades, the axial chord length (Cx) of which was 237 mm with a turning angle of 126°. The mainstream Reynolds number based on the axial chord was 1.5×105. The turbulence intensity level at the cascade inlet was approximately 12%. Measurements were made at three different rim heights (H) of about 3%, 6%, and 9% of the axial chord length. The tip clearance (C) ranges were 1–3% of the axial chord length. Also, three different types of blade tip surfaces were equipped with a single row of film-cooling holes along the camber line, near the pressure and the suction side rim. In particular, a coolant was injected at an incline of 45° from near the suction side film cooling holes. The film cooling experiments were done with a fixed tip clearance and rim height at 1% and 6% of the axial chord length. The blowing rate was fixed at 1.5. High heat transfer rates were observed near the leading edge on the tip surface in some cases, due to the reattachment of tip leakage flow. The peak values moved toward the suction-side edge, and the magnitude and area of high heat transfer increased near the leading edge as the tip clearance increased. The heat transfer decreased on the tip surface with increases in the rim height. In the film-cooling cases, the high heat transfer and film-cooling effectiveness region appeared near the film-cooling holes.


Author(s):  
Ioanna Aslanidou ◽  
Budimir Rosic ◽  
Vasudevan Kanjirakkad ◽  
Sumiu Uchida

The remarkable developments in gas turbine materials and cooling technologies have allowed a steady increase in combustor outlet temperature and hence in gas turbine efficiency over the last half century. However, the efficiency benefits of higher gas temperature, even at the current levels, are significantly offset by the increased losses associated with the required cooling. Additionally, the advancements in gas turbine cooling technology have introduced considerable complexities into turbine design and manufacture. Therefore, a reduction in coolant requirements for the current gas temperature levels is one possible way for gas turbine designers to achieve even higher efficiency levels. The leading edges of the first turbine vane row are exposed to high heat loads. The high coolant requirements and geometry constraints limit the possible arrangement of the multiple rows of film cooling holes in the so called showerhead region. In the past, investigators have tested many different showerhead configurations, varying the number of rows, inclination angle and shape of the cooling holes. However the current leading edge cooling strategies using showerheads have not been shown to allow further increase in turbine temperature without excessive use of coolant air. Therefore new cooling strategies for the first vane have to be explored. In gas turbines with multiple combustor chambers around the annulus, the transition duct walls can be used to shield, i.e. to protect the first vane leading edges from the high heat loads. In this way the stagnation region at the leading edge and the shower-head of film cooling holes can be completely removed, resulting in a significant reduction in the total amount of cooling air that is otherwise required. By eliminating the showerhead the shielding concept significantly simplifies the design and lowers the manufacturing costs. This paper numerically analyses the potential of the leading edge shielding concept for cooling air reduction. The vane shape was modified to allow for the implementation of the concept and non-restrictive relative movement between the combustor and the vane. It has been demonstrated that the coolant flow that was originally used for cooling the combustor wall trailing edge and a fraction of the coolant air used for the vane showerhead cooling can be used to effectively cool both the suction and the pressure surfaces of the vane.


Large heat transfer rates are always desired for rocket propulsion applications as high heat loads are associated at the nozzle exit. Different strategies have been employed in order to have high heat transfer coefficients including use of liquid nitrogen, spray cooling etc. ISRO has planned to use aluminium based nano-particles with kerosene in order to cool launching vehicles including GSLV Mk III as it is the heaviest rocket that can carry large payloads. Recently, ISRO has announced to install its own International Space Station (ISS) in future and in such applications larger payloads are to be carried by the rocket. In this work, an analytical study on the thermodynamic properties of the aluminium nano-particles based kerosene nanofluid has been done and an attempt has also been made to develop a temperature and pressure dependent correlation that can be used in computational analysis of thrust chambers while film/regenerative cooling.


Author(s):  
Yumin Xiao ◽  
R. S. Amano

A numerical study has been performed to predict a three-dimensional turbulent flow and end-wall heat transfer in a blade passage. The complex three-dimensional flow in the end-wall region has an important impact on the local heat transfer. The leading edge horseshoe vortex, the leading edge corner vortices, the passage vortex, and the trailing edge wake cause large variations in the entire end-wall region. The heat transfer distributions in the end-wall region are calculated and the mechanism for the high heat transfer region has been revealed. The calculations show that the algebraic turbulence model lacks the ability to predict the heat transfer in the transition region, but it is valid in other flow region. The local high heat transfer downstream of the trailing edge is enhanced by the wake downstream of the trailing edge. The horseshoe vortex results a high heat transfer region near the leading edge and induces the leading edge corner vortices which cause high heat transfer on the end-wall at both sides of blade end-wall corner.


2012 ◽  
Vol 135 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ioanna Aslanidou ◽  
Budimir Rosic ◽  
Vasudevan Kanjirakkad ◽  
Sumiu Uchida

The remarkable developments in gas turbine materials and cooling technologies have allowed a steady increase in combustor outlet temperature and, hence, in gas turbine efficiency over the last half century. However, the efficiency benefits of higher gas temperature, even at the current levels, are significantly offset by the increased losses associated with the required cooling. Additionally, the advancements in gas turbine cooling technology have introduced considerable complexities into turbine design and manufacture. Therefore, a reduction in coolant requirements for the current gas temperature levels is one possible way for gas turbine designers to achieve even higher efficiency levels. The leading edges of the first turbine vane row are exposed to high heat loads. The high coolant requirements and geometry constraints limit the possible arrangement of the multiple rows of film cooling holes in the so-called showerhead region. In the past, investigators have tested many different showerhead configurations by varying the number of rows, inclination angle, and shape of the cooling holes. However, the current leading edge cooling strategies using showerheads have not been shown to allow a further increase in turbine temperature without the excessive use of coolant air. Therefore, new cooling strategies for the first vane have to be explored. In gas turbines with multiple combustor chambers around the annulus, the transition duct walls can be used to shield, i.e., to protect, the first vane leading edges from the high heat loads. In this way, the stagnation region at the leading edge and the showerhead of film cooling holes can be completely removed, resulting in a significant reduction in the total amount of cooling air that is otherwise required. By eliminating the showerhead the shielding concept significantly simplifies the design and lowers the manufacturing costs. This paper numerically analyzes the potential of the leading edge shielding concept for cooling air reduction. The vane shape was modified to allow for the implementation of the concept and nonrestrictive relative movement between the combustor and the vane. It has been demonstrated that the coolant flow that was originally used for cooling the combustor wall trailing edge and a fraction of the coolant air used for the vane showerhead cooling can be used to effectively cool both the suction and the pressure surfaces of the vane.


Author(s):  
E. M. Hohlfeld ◽  
J. R. Christophel ◽  
E. L. Couch ◽  
K. A. Thole

The clearance gap between the tip of a turbine blade and its associated shroud provides a flow path for leakage from the pressure side of the blade to the suction side. The tip region is one area that experiences high heat transfer and, as such, can be the determining factor for blade life. One method for reducing blade tip heat transfer is to use cooler fluid from the compressor, that exits from relatively large dirt purge holes placed in the tip, for cooling purposes. Dirt purge holes are typically manufactured in the blade tip to extract dirt from the coolant flow through centrifugal forces such that these dirt particles do not block smaller diameter film-cooling holes. This paper discusses the results of numerous computational simulations of cooling injection from dirt purge holes along the tip of a turbine blade. Some comparisons are also made to experimental results in which a properly scaled-up blade geometry (12X) was used to form a two-passage linear cascade. Computational results indicate that the cooling achieved through the dirt purge injection from the blade tip is dependent on the gap size as well as the blowing ratio. For a small tip gap (0.54% of the span) the flow exiting the dirt purge holes act as a blockage for the leakage flow across the gap. As the blowing ratio is increased for a large tip gap (1.63% of the span), the tip cooling increases only slightly while the cooling to the shroud increases significantly.


Author(s):  
Huitao Yang ◽  
Hamn-Ching Chen ◽  
Je-Chin Han ◽  
Hee-Koo Moon

In modern gas turbines, the blade leading edge region is one area that experiences high heat transfer due to the stagnation flow. Many cooling techniques have been applied to blades, so they can withstand these high heat loads; one of the common methods in cooling turbine blades is to apply film cooling. In the present study, numerical simulations were performed to predict the film cooling effectiveness and heat transfer coefficient on the leading edge of a rotating blade in a 1-1/2 turbine stage using a Reynolds stress turbulence model together with a non-equilibrium wall function. In addition, the unsteady characteristics of the film cooling and heat transfer at different time phases during a passing period were also investigated.


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