A SUPERPOSITION TECHNIQUE FOR PREDICTING OVERALL EFFECTIVENESS WITH MULTIPLE SOURCES OF INDIVIDUALLY CHARACTERIZED INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL COOLANT FLOWS

Abstract

Abstract Gas turbine engines rely on intricate cooling schemes to protect turbine components from the high temperature freestream gas. Determining the optimal placement of film cooling holes while remaining mindful of the consumption of coolant air is therefore a design challenge. For several decades a method of superposition has been in use that provides a reasonable prediction of the adiabatic effectiveness in a region influenced by multiple rows of film cooling holes acting together if the adiabatic effectiveness distributions resulting from individual rows are already known. This classical superposition technique has been used to provide a first cut at determining where coolant holes might be placed. A shortcoming of the method is that it strictly applies only to prediction of adiabatic effectiveness which is indicative of the adiabatic wall temperature, not the actual surface temperature. The overall effectiveness, which is indicative of the actual surface temperature is somewhat more complicated as it is influenced not only by the external cooling, but also internal cooling. In the present work, a method of superposition of overall effectiveness data is proposed, allowing prediction of the actual surface temperature distribution on a component. Experimental results show that it is possible to use knowledge of the overall effectiveness distributions resulting from individual internal cooling and associated film cooling holes acting alone to determine how they are likely going to act when combined. This technique shows promise for a turbine designer to use superposition for actual surface temperature prediction and therefore higher quality initial cooling designs.