Parametric Study on Anti-Vortex Film Cooling Hole Arrangements

Abstract

Film cooling has been extensively used to provide thermal protection for the external surface of the gas turbine blades. Numerous number of film cooling holes designs and arrangements have been introduced. The main motivation of these designs and arrangements are to reduce the lift-off effect cause by the counter rotating vortices (CRVP) produce by cylindrical cooling hole. One of the efforts is the introduction of newly found anti-vortex film cooling design. The present study focuses on anti-vortex holes arrangement consists of a main hole and pair of smaller holes. All three holes share a common inlet with the outlet of the smaller holes varies base on it relative position towards the main hole. Three anti-vortex holes arrangements have been considered; downstream anti-vortex hole arrangement (DAV), lateral anti-vortex hole arrangement (LAV), and upstream anti-vortex hole arrangement (UAV). In addition, a single hole (SH) film cooling has also been considered as the baseline. The investigation make used of ANSYS CFX software ver. 14. The investigations are made through Reynolds Average Navier Stokes analyses with the application of shear k-ε turbulence model. The results show that the anti-vortex designs produce significant improvement in term of film cooling effectiveness and distribution. The LAV arrangement shows the best film cooling effectiveness distribution among all considered cases and is consistent for all blowing ratios (BR). The results also unveil the formation of new vortex pair on both side of the primary hole CRVP. Interaction between the new vortices and the main CRVP structure reduce the lift off explaining the increased lateral film effectiveness.