Film cooling effect of upstream jump coolant on turbine endwall with combustor-turbine interface misalignment

Abstract

The investigation of jump cooling performance on turbine endwall independently causes its actual cooling effectiveness to deviate from the design values. In this paper, the endwall jump cooling structure with combustor-turbine interface cavity and combustor liners is modeled. Taking the realistic combustor-turbine interface features into account, the effect of jump coolant on turbine endwall film cooling and heat transfer characteristics is numerically studied. Under different endwall misalignment modes, the aerodynamic interaction mechanisms of realistic combustor outflow profile, jump coolant jet and cascade secondary flows at turbine endwall region are revealed. The modification effects of combustor-turbine interface features on jump cooling of the endwall are investigated. The results show that the combustor outflow severely ingests into the combustor-turbine interface cavity after flowing across several steps. Two branches of cavity vortex are subsequently generated in the middle-pitch region of cascade to affect the jump coolant jet. At low coolant blowing ratio, the attachment and separation sides of cavity vortex individually result in high and low cooling regions, while the horseshoe vortex leads to a large wedge-shaped cooling region. At z/Cax < 0, the backward step leads to a higher cooling effectiveness than forward step by 0.2. The jump coolant only leads to phantom cooling effect on downstream part of the vane suction side surface. The net heat flux reduction (NHFR) between two cavity vortexes and at pressure side junction are individually 0<NHFR<0.2 and −0.2<NHFR < −0.1. At high blowing ratio, the jump coolant can cover the pressure side junction with the highest cooling effectiveness of 0.5. The jump coolant can flow across the horseshoe vortex and directly upwash the vane surface. The weak protection regions between two cavity vortexes and near the attachment line of the pressure side horseshoe vortex enlarges. Compared with the forward step, the backward step achieves a lower NHFR by up to 0.1 and a higher Nusselt number. This paper provides an in-depth analysis of the aero-thermal physics of endwall jump cooling concerning realistic combustor-turbine interface conditions.