Experimental and Numerical Study on the Effect of Fan-Shaped Hole Configuration on Film Cooling Effectiveness

Abstract

Abstract Film cooling technique has been widely applied to protect gas turbine blades from high temperature combustion gases. In this study, to improve the cooling effectiveness of fan-shaped film cooling holes, the effect of the main shape parameters on the film cooling effectiveness was investigated through numerical and experimental studies. Commercial software based on Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) analysis was used in the numerical study, and the PSP (Pressure Sensitive Paint) technique was used to experimentally measure the film cooling effectiveness. The design points for the optimization were derived by the Box-Behnken method, which is one of the design of experiments (DOE). Three shape parameters of a fan-shaped hole were selected as design variables: the forward expansion angle, the lateral expansion angle, and the length of cylindrical part of the hole. The area-averaged film cooling effectiveness was selected as an objective function and the optimal hole shape of each analysis was obtained using the response surface methodology (RSM). It was confirmed that the film cooling effectiveness was affected by all three variables in both numerical and experimental results. Both analyses showed similar trends of each variable on film cooling effectiveness, but the optimal hole shape obtained by each method was different. The difference is attributed to flow separation not captured by RANS based analysis and surface roughness caused by the manufacturing process and the PSP coating in experimental analysis. Notably, the experimentally optimized hole showed better film cooling effectiveness than that of the numerically optimized hole in the comparison experiments.