Numerical Predictions of Flow Structures and Film Cooling Effectiveness Values of a Turbine Vane: Effects of Secondary Holes

Author(s):  
Rui Zhu ◽  
Terrence W. Simon ◽  
Gongnan Xie

Abstract In modern gas turbines, film cooling is the most common and efficient way to provide thermal protection for hot components. Secondary holes to a primary film cooling hole are used to improve film cooling performance by creating anti-kidney vortices, a technique that has been well documented using flat plate models. This study aims to evaluate the effects of secondary holes on film cooling effectiveness over an airfoil. The film cooling performance and flow fields of a row of primary holes with secondary holes on the pressure side and suction side of a C3X vane are numerically investigated and compared with the results of a single row of cylindrical holes and two rows of staggered cylindrical holes. Cases with different blowing ratios are analyzed. It is shown from the simulation that film cooling effectiveness of primary holes with secondary holes is much better than with a single row of cylindrical holes, and slightly better than with two rows of staggered holes on both pressure side and suction side, with the same amount of coolant usage and blowing ratio. The enhancement is higher on the pressure side than on the suction side. The results show that adding secondary holes can enhance film cooling effectiveness by creating anti-kidney vortices, which will weaken jet lift-off from the primary holes caused by the kidney vortex pair, especially at higher blowing ratios. In addition, film coverage of primary holes with secondary holes is wider and persists further downstream than for a single row of cylindrical holes.

2008 ◽  
Vol 131 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruwan P. Somawardhana ◽  
David G. Bogard

Recent studies have shown that film cooling with holes embedded in a shallow trench significantly improves cooling performance. In this study, the performance of shallow trench configurations was investigated for simulated deteriorated surface conditions, i.e., increased surface roughness and near-hole obstructions. Experiments were conducted on the suction side of a scaled-up simulated turbine vane. Results from the study indicated that as much as 50% degradation occurred with upstream obstructions, but downstream obstructions actually enhanced film cooling effectiveness. However, the transverse trench configuration performed significantly better than the traditional cylindrical holes, both with and without obstructions and almost eliminated the effects of both surface roughness and obstructions.


Author(s):  
Ruwan P. Somawardhana ◽  
David G. Bogard

Recent studies have shown that film cooling with holes imbedded in a shallow trench significantly improve cooling performance. In this study, the performance of shallow trench configurations were investigated for simulated deteriorated surface conditions, i.e. increased surface roughness and near hole obstructions. Experiments were conducted on the suction side of a scaled-up simulated turbine vane. Results from the study indicated that as much as 50% degradation occurred with upstream obstructions, but downstream obstructions actually enhanced film cooling effectiveness. However, the transverse trench configuration performed significantly better than the traditional cylindrical holes, both with and without obstructions and almost eliminated the effects of both surface roughness and obstructions.


Author(s):  
Yi Lu ◽  
Yinyi Hong ◽  
Zhirong Lin ◽  
Xin Yuan

Detailed film cooling effectiveness distributions were experimentally obtained on a turbine vane platform within a linear cascade. Testing was done in a large scale five-vane cascade with low freestream Renolds number condition 634,000 based on the axial chord length and the exit velocity. The detailed film-cooling effectiveness distributions on the platform were obtained using pressure sensitive paint technique. Two film-cooling hole configurations, cylindrical and fan-shaped, were used to cool the vane surface with two rows on pressure side, two rows on suction side and three rows on leading edge. For cylindrical holes, the blowing ratio of the coolant through the discrete cooling holes on pressure side and suction side ranged from 0.3 to 1.5 (based on the inlet mainstream velocity) while the blowing ratio ranging from 0.15 to 1.5 on leading edge; for fan-shaped holes, the four blowing ratios were 0.5, 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0. Results showed that average film-cooling effectiveness decreased with increasing blowing rate for the cylindrical holes, while the fan-shaped passage showed increased film-cooling effectiveness with increasing blowing ratio, indicating the fan-shaped cooling holes helped to improve film-cooling effectiveness by reducing overall jet liftoff. Fan-shaped holes improved average film-cooling effectiveness by 93.2%, 287.6% and 489.6% on pressure side, −4.1%, 27.9% and 78.2% on suction side over cylindrical holes at the blowing ratio of 0.5, 1.0 and 1.5 respectively. Numerical results were used to analyze the details of the flow and heat transfer on the cooling area with two turbulence models. Results demonstrated that tendency of the film cooling effectiveness distribution of numerical calculation and experimental measurement was generally consistent at different blowing ratio.


Author(s):  
Diganta P. Narzary ◽  
Zhihong Gao ◽  
Shantanu Mhetras ◽  
Je-Chin Han

The effect of fan-shaped, laid-back compound angled cooling holes placed along the span of a fully-cooled high pressure turbine blade in a 5-blade linear cascade on film cooling effectiveness is studied using the Pressure Sensitive Paint (PSP) technique. Four rows of shaped film cooling holes are provided on the pressure side while two such rows are provided on the suction side of the blade. Three rows of cylindrical holes are drilled at 30° to the surface on the leading edge to capture the effect of showerhead film coolant injection. The coolant is injected at four different average blowing ratios of 0.3, 0.6, 0.9 and 1.2. Presence of wake due to upstream vanes is studied by placing a periodic set of rods upstream of the test blade. The wake is generated using 4.8mm diameter rods. The wake rods can be clocked by changing their stationary positions in front of the test blade to simulate a progressing wake. Effect of wake is recorded at four phase locations with equal intervals. The free stream Reynolds number, based on the axial chord length and the exit velocity, is 750,000 and the inlet and the exit Mach numbers are 0.27 and 0.44, respectively resulting in a blade pressure ratio of 1.14. Turbulence intensity level at the cascade inlet is 6% with an integral length scale of around 5cm. Results show that the fan-shaped, laid-back compound angled holes produce uniform and wide coolant coverage on the suction side except for those regions affected by the passage and tip leakage vortices. The advantage of compound shaped hole design is seen from the higher effectiveness values on the suction side compared to that of the compound cylindrical holes. The presence of a stationary upstream wake can result in lower film cooling effectiveness on the blade surface. Variation of blowing ratio from 0.3 to 1.2 show more or less uniform increment in effectiveness increase on the pressure side, whereas on the suction side, the increment shows signs of saturation beyond M = 0.6.


Author(s):  
Christopher Yoon ◽  
Jacob Moore ◽  
David Bogard

Abstract Film cooling is often used for turbine airfoil cooling, and there are numerous studies of the performance of a single row of holes. In actual application there will typically be multiple rows of holes which interact. Consequently there is a need to develop techniques to predict film cooling performance with multiple rows of coolant holes using superposition of single row cooling effectiveness. Although there have been many studies of superposition techniques for predicting film cooling effectiveness with multiple rows of cylindrical holes, there have been very few in which shaped holes were used with a typical turbine airfoil model. In this study, film effectiveness was measured on the suction side of a turbine blade model using two rows of shaped coolant holes. Measurements were made with each row independently and with both rows combined. This provided the experimental data for superposition predictions and to evaluate these predictions. Each row had 7-7-7 shaped holes with pitch to diameter ratio of 6, and the two rows were more than 40 diameters apart. The experiments were run using two different upstream blowing ratios, and a wide range of downstream blowing ratios. The superposition predictions of film effectiveness were reasonably accurate when the upstream row of holes were operated at a high blowing ratio with a corresponding smaller film effectiveness (due to jet separation). However, when the upstream coolant holes were operated at the optimum blowing ratio, and hence maximum film effectiveness downstream, the superposition analysis predicted film effectiveness levels slightly lower than actual levels. These results show that there was an interaction between jets that resulted in higher film effectiveness than was accounted for with a superposition prediction.


Author(s):  
T. Elnady ◽  
O. Hassan ◽  
I. Hassan ◽  
L. Kadem ◽  
T. Lucas

An experimental investigation has been performed to measure the film cooling performance of louver scheme over a scaled vane of high-pressure gas turbine using a two-dimensional cascade. Two rows of axially oriented louver scheme are used to cool the suction side and their performance is compared with two similar rows of standard cylindrical holes. The effect of hole location on the cooling performance is investigated for each row individually, then the row interaction is investigated for both rows at four different blowing ratios ranging from 1 to 2 with a 0.9 density ratio. The exit Reynolds number based on the true chord is 1.5E5 and exit Mach number is 0.23. The temperature distribution on the vane is mapped using a transient Thermochromic Liquid Crystal (TLC) technique to obtain the local distributions of the heat transfer coefficient and film cooling effectiveness. The louver scheme shows a superior cooling effectiveness than that of the cylindrical holes at all blowing ratios in terms of protection and lateral coverage. The row location highly affects the cooling performance for both the louver and cylindrical scheme.


Author(s):  
Mats Kinell ◽  
Esa Utriainen ◽  
Hossein Nadali Najafabadi ◽  
Matts Karlsson ◽  
Botond Barabas

In order to protect a solid surface exposed to high temperature gaseous flows, e.g. gas turbines and rocket engines, a second gas at lower temperature may be introduced into the hot boundary layer, i.e. one obtains a three temperature problem. The impact of the film cooling on a prototype vane due to variation in blowing ratio, the shape of the hole-outlet and position has been experimentally investigated. The semi-infinite and low conductive test object, initially at a uniform temperature, was exposed to a sudden step change in main flow temperature and a time-resolved surface temperature was measured using an IR camera. By assuming constant values of the heat transfer coefficient and the film cooling effectiveness over time, the heat equation was solved using least squares. The prototype vane was tested for different film cooling row positions on the pressure and suction side. Both cylindrical as well as fan shaped holes were investigated with and without showerhead cooling. The resulting heat transfer coefficient and film cooling effectiveness on the pressure side is compared to flat plate studies and to the results from the suction side. Also, the applicability of using superposition on showerhead cooling and on single/double rows is investigated. Furthermore, the results are compared to other published airfoil film cooling experiments and to CFD analysis for which conclusions are drawn on quantitative and qualitative capabilities of this tool.


2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 425-433
Author(s):  
Wei Zhang ◽  
Shuai Zhou ◽  
Zhuang Wu ◽  
Guangchao Li ◽  
Zhihai Kou

Abstract Film cooling performance of one row of cylindrical holes integrated with saw-tooth slots was numerically studied at blowing ratios of 0.5, 1.0 1.5 and 2.0 respectively. The saw-tooth slot concept combines the advantages both of easy machining for the slot and of the high film cooling effectiveness caused by the anti-vortex induced by the shaped hole. The film holes have an inclination angles of 30°, length to diameter ratio of 4 and pitch to diameter ratio of 3. The corner angles of the saw-tooth are 60°, 90°, 120°, 150° and 180° respectively. The 180° corner angle corresponds to a standard transverse slot. The emphasis of this other is on the influence of the corner angles of the saw-tooth on film cooling effectiveness. The flow field and thermal field were obtained to explain the mechanism of film cooling performance improvement by the saw-tooth slot. The results show that the numerical data agrees with the experimental values for the cylindrical holes. Relatively small corner angles generate uniform local film cooling effectiveness and high spanwise averaged film cooling effectiveness due to the coolant ejected from the hole smoothly flowing into the slot. The effect of corner angles strongly depends on blowing ratios. The increase of x/D decreases the differences of film cooling effectiveness between various corner angles. At low blowing ratios, an anti-vortex can be found with the spanwise angle of 60° and 120°. At high blowing ratios, an anti-vortex can be found with the spanwise angle of 60°.


Author(s):  
Rui Zhu ◽  
Gongnan Xie ◽  
Terrence W. Simon

Secondary holes to a main film cooling hole are used to improve film cooling performance by creating anti-kidney vortices. The effects of injection angle of the secondary holes on both film cooling effectiveness and surrounding thermal and flow fields are investigated in this numerical study. Two kinds of primary hole shapes are adopted. One is a cylindrical hole, the other is a horn-shaped hole which is designed from a cylindrical hole by expanding the hole in the transverse direction to double the hole size at the exit. Two smaller cylindrical holes, the secondary holes, are located symmetrically about the centerline and downstream of the primary hole. Three compound injection angles (α = 30°, 45° and 60°, β = 30°) of the secondary holes are analyzed while the injection angle of the primary hole is kept at 45°. Cases with various blowing ratios are computed. It is shown from the simulation that cooling effectiveness of secondary holes with a horn-shaped primary hole is better than that with a cylindrical primary hole, especially at high blowing ratios. With a cylindrical primary hole, increasing inclination angle of the secondary holes provides better cooling effectiveness because the anti-kidney vortices created by shallow secondary holes cannot counteract the kidney vortex pairs adequately, enhancing mixing of main flow and coolant. For secondary holes with a horn-shaped primary hole, large secondary hole inclination angles provide better cooling performance at low blowing ratios; but, at high blowing ratios, secondary holes with small inclination angles are more effective, as the film coverage becomes wider in the downstream area.


1999 ◽  
Vol 122 (3) ◽  
pp. 553-557 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. A. Hale ◽  
M. W. Plesniak ◽  
S. Ramadhyani

The adiabatic, steady-state liquid crystal technique was used to measure surface adiabatic film cooling effectiveness values in the near-hole region X/D<10. A parametric study was conducted for a single row of short holes L/D⩽3 fed by a narrow plenum H/D=1. Film cooling effectiveness values are presented and compared for various L/D ratios (0.66 to 3.0), three different blowing ratios (0.5, 1.0, and 1.5), two different plenum feed configurations (co-flow and counterflow), and two different injection angles (35 and 90 deg). Injection hole geometry and plenum feed direction were found to affect short hole film cooling performance significantly. Under certain conditions, similar or improved coverage was achieved with 90 deg holes compared with 35 deg holes. This result has important implications for manufacturing of thin-walled film-cooled blades or vanes. [S0889-504X(00)00603-6]


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