A Three-Regime Based Method for Correlating Film Cooling Effectiveness for Cylindrical and Shaped Holes

Abstract

To cope with high temperature of the gas from combustor, cooling is often used in the hot gas components in gas turbines. Film cooling is one of the effective methods used in this application. Both cylindrical and fan-shaped holes are used in film cooling. There have been a number of correlations published for both cylindrical and fan-shaped holes regarding film cooling effectiveness. Unfortunately there are no definitive correlations for either cylindrical or fan-shaped holes. This is due to the nature of the complexity of film cooling where many factors influence its performance, e.g., blowing ratio, density ratio, surface angle, downstream distance, expansion angle, hole length, turbulence level, etc. A test rig using infrared camera was built to test the film cooling performance for a scaled geometry from a real nozzle guide vane. Both cylindrical and fan-shaped holes were tested. To correlate the experimental data, a three-regime based method was developed for predicting the film cooling effectiveness. Based on the blowing ratio, the proposed method divides the film cooling performance in three regimes: fully attached (or no jet lift-off), fully jet lift-off, and the transition regime in between. Two separate correlations are developed for fully attached and full jet lift-off regimes, respectively. The method of interpolation from these two regimes is used to predict the film cooling effectiveness for the transition regime, based on the blowing ratio. It has been found this method can give a good correlation to match the experimental data, for both cylindrical and fan-shaped holes. A comparison with literature was also carried out, and it showed a good agreement.