The durability of gas turbine engines is strongly dependent on the component temperatures. For the combustor and turbine airfoils and endwalls, film cooling is used extensively to reduce component temperatures. Film cooling is a cooling method used in virtually all of today's aircraft turbine engines and in many power-generation turbine engines and yet has very difficult phenomena to predict. The interaction of jets-in-crossflow, which is representative of film cooling, results in a shear layer that leads to mixing and a decay in the cooling performance along a surface. This interaction is highly dependent on the jet-to-crossflow mass and momentum flux ratios. Film-cooling performance is difficult to predict because of the inherent complex flowfields along the airfoil component surfaces in turbine engines. Film cooling is applied to nearly all of the external surfaces associated with the airfoils that are exposed to the hot combustion gasses such as the leading edges, main bodies, blade tips, and endwalls. In a review of the literature, it was found that there are strong effects of freestream turbulence, surface curvature, and hole shape on the performance of film cooling. Film cooling is reviewed through a discussion of the analyses methodologies, a physical description, and the various influences on film-cooling performance.

Gas Turbine Film Cooling

A review of gas turbine effusion cooling studies

An experimental and computational investigation was conducted on the film cooling adiabatic effectiveness of a flat plate with full coverage film cooling. The full coverage film cooling array was comprised of ten rows of coolant holes, arranged in a staggered pattern, with short, L/D = 1, normal coolant holes. A single row of coolant holes was also examined to determine the accuracy of a superposition prediction of the full coverage adiabatic effectiveness performance. Large density coolant jets and high mainstream turbulence conditions were utilized to simulate realistic engine conditions. High-resolution adiabatic effectiveness measurements were obtained using infrared imaging techniques and a large-scale flat plate model. Optimum adiabatic effectiveness was found to occur for a blowing ratio of M = 0.65. At this blowing ratio separation of the coolant jet immediately downstream of the hole was observed. For M = 0.65, the high mainstream turbulence decreased the spatially averaged effectiveness level by 12 percent. The high mainstream turbulence produced a larger effect for lower blowing ratios. The superposition model based on single row effectiveness results over-predicted the full coverage effectiveness levels.Copyright © 2001 by ASME

Full-Coverage Film Cooling With Short Normal Injection Holes

Effusion cooling of combustor liners for gas turbine engines is quite challenging and necessary to prevent thermal distress of the combustor liner walls. The flow and thermal patterns in the cooling layer are affected by the closely spaced film-cooling holes. It is important to fully document how the film layer behaves with a full-coverage cooling scheme to gain an understanding into surface cooling phenomena. This paper discusses experimental results from a combustor simulator tested in a low-speed wind tunnel. Engine representative, non-dimensional coolant flows were tested for a full-coverage effusion plate. Laser Doppler velocimetry was used to measure the flow characteristics of the cooling layer. These experiments indicate that the full-coverage film cooling flow has unique and scaleable velocity profiles that result from the closely spaced effusion holes. A parametric study of the cooling flow behavior illustrates the complex nature of the film flow and how it affects cooling performance.Copyright © 2006 by ASME

Investigation of Velocity Profiles for Effusion Cooling of a Combustor Liner

State-of-the-art liner cooling technology for modern combustors is represented by effusion cooling (or full-coverage film cooling). Effusion is a very efficient cooling strategy based on the use of multi-perforated liners, where metal temperature is lowered by the combined protective effect of coolant film and heat removal through forced convection inside each hole. The aim of this experimental campaign is the evaluation of the thermal performance of multi-perforated liners with geometrical and fluid-dynamic parameters ranging among typical combustor engine values. Results were obtained as adiabatic film effectiveness following the mass transfer analogy by the use of Pressure Sensitive Paint, while local values of overall effectiveness were obtained by eight thermocouples housed in as many dead holes about 2 mm below the investigated surface. Concerning the tested geometries, different porosity levels were considered: such values were obtained both increasing the hole diameter and pattern spacing. Then the effect of hole inclination and aspect ratio pattern shape were tested to assess the impact of typical cooling system features. Seven multi perforated planar plates, reproducing the effusion arrays of real combustor liners, were tested imposing 6 blowing ratios in the range 0.5–5. Test samples were made of stainless steel (AISI304) in order to achieve Biot number similitude for overall effectiveness tests.To extend the validity of the survey a correlative analysis was performed to point out, in an indirect way, the augmentation of hot side heat transfer coefficient due to effusion jets. Finally, to address the thermal behaviour of the different geometries in presence of gas side radiation, additional simulations were performed considering different levels of radiative heat flux.Copyright © 2013 by ASME

T. Kumagai

Papers

Film Cooling Effectiveness for Injection from Multirow Holes