CFD Evaluations of Film Cooling Flow Scaling Between Engine and Experimental Conditions

Abstract

The hostile turbine environment requires that film cooling designs are tested in wind tunnels that allow for appropriate instrumentation and optical access, but at temperatures much lower than in the hot section of an engine. Low temperature experimental techniques may involve methods to elevate the coolant to freestream density ratio to match or approximately match engine conditions. These methods include the use of CO2 or cold air for the coolant while room temperature air is used for the freestream. However, density is not the only fluid property to differ between typical wind tunnel experiments so uncertainty remains regarding which of these methods is best suited to provide scaled film cooling performance. Furthermore, precise matching of both the freestream and coolant Reynolds numbers is generally impossible when either mass flux ratio or momentum flux ratio is matched. A computational simulation of an engine scale film cooled leading edge geometry at high temperature engine conditions was conducted to establish a baseline condition to be matched at simulated low temperature experimental conditions with a 10x scale model. Matching was performed with three common coolant types used in low temperature film cooling experiments — room temperature air, CO2, and cold air to match density ratio. Results indicate that matched momentum flux ratio is the most appropriate for matching adiabatic effectiveness for the case of room temperature air coolant, but also matching density ratio through either CO2 or cold coolant has utility. Cold air was particularly beneficial, surpassing the ability of CO2 to match adiabatic effectiveness at the engine condition, even when CO2 perfectly matches density ratio.