To achieve high thermal efficiency in modern gas turbines, the turbine-inlet temperature has to be increased. In response to such requisites and to prevent thermal failure of the components exposed to hot gas streams, the use of different cooling techniques, including film cooling, is essential. Finding an optimum film cooling design has become a challenge as it is influenced by a large number of flow and geometrical parameters. This study is dedicated to some important aspects of film cooling of a turbine guide vane and consists of three parts. The first part is associated with an experimental investigation of the suction and pressure side cooling by means of a transient IR-Thermography technique under engine representative conditions. It is shown that the overall film cooling performance of the suction side can be improved by adding showerhead cooling if fan-shaped holes are used, while cylindrical holes may not necessarily benefit from a showerhead. According to the findings, investigation of an optimum cooling design for the suction side is not only a function of hole shape, blowing ratio, state of approaching flow, etc., but is also highly dependent on the presence/absence of showerhead cooling as well as the number of cooling rows. In this regard, it is also discussed that the combined effect of the adiabatic film effectiveness (AFE) and the heat transfer coefficient (HTC) should be considered in such study. As for the pressure side cooling, it is found that either the showerhead or a single row of cylindrical cooling holes can enhance the HTC substantially, whereas a combination of the two or using fan-shaped holes indicates considerably lower HTC. An important conclusion is that adding more than one cooling row will not augment the HTC and will even decrease it under certain circumstances. In the second part, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) investigations have shown that film cooling holes subjected to higher flow acceleration will maintain a higher level of AFE. Although this was found to be valid for both suction and pressure side, due to an overall lower acceleration for the pressure side, a lower AFE was achieved. Moreover, the CFD results indicate that fan-shaped holes with low area ratio (dictated by design constraints for medium-size gas turbines), suffer from cooling jet separation and hence reduction in AFE for blowing ratios above unity. Verification of these conclusions by experiments suggests that CFD can be used more extensively, e.g. for parametric studies. The last part deals with method development for deriving correlations based on experimental data to support engineers in the design stage. The proposed method and the ultimate correlation model could successfully correlate the laterally averaged AFE to the downstream distance, the blowing ratio and the local pressure coefficient representing the effect of approaching flow. The applicability of the method has been examined and the high level of predictability of the final model demonstrates its suitability to be used for design purposes in the future. / Turbo Power Program

Considerable reductions in gas turbine weight and fuel consumption can be achieved by operating at a higher turbine entry temperature. The move to lean combustors with flatter outlet temperature profiles will increase temperatures on the turbine endwalls. This work will study methods to improve endwall film cooling, to allow these advances. Turbine secondary flows are caused by a deficit in near-wall momentum. These flow features redistribute near-wall flows and make it difficult to film-cool endwalls. In this work, endwall film cooling was studied by CFD and validated by experimental measurements in a linear cascade. This study will add to the growing body of evidence that injection of high momentum coolant into the upstream boundary layer can suppress secondary flows by increasing near-wall momentum. The reduction of secondary flows allows for effective cooling of the endwall. It is also noted that excess near-wall momentum is undesirable. This leads to upwash on the vane, driving coolant away from the endwall. A passive-scalar tracking method has been devised to isolate the contribution of individual film cooling holes to cooling effectiveness. This method was used to systematically optimize endwall cooling systems. Designs are presented which use half the coolant mass flow compared to a baseline design, while maintaining similar cooling effectiveness levels on the critical trailing endwall. By studying the effect of coolant injection on vane inlet total pressure profile, secondary flows were suppressed and upwash on the vane was reduced. The methods and insight obtained from this study were applied to a high pressure nozzle guide vane endwall from a current engine. The optimized cooling system developed offers significant improvement over the baseline.

Heat management is an essential part of combustor design, as operating temperatures within the combustor generally exceed safe working temperatures of the materials employed in its construction. Two principal methods used to manage this heat are impingement and film cooling. Impingement heat transfer refers to jets of impinging fluid delivered by orifices integrated into internal structures in order to remove undesired heat. This mode of heat transfer has a relatively high effectiveness, making it an attractive method of heat management. As such, a considerable number of studies have been done on the subject providing a substantial body of useful knowledge. However, there are innovative cooling configurations being used in gas turbines which generate compressibility and temperature ratio effects on heat transfer which are currently unexplored. Presented here are data showing that these effects have a significant impact on heat transfer and new correlations are presented to account for temperature ratio and Mach number effects for a range of conditions. These findings are significant and can be applied to impinging flows in other areas of a gas turbine engine such as turbine blades and vanes. Film cooling refers to the injection of coolant onto a surface through an array of sharply angled holes. This is done in a manner that allows the coolant to remain close to the surface where it provides an insulating layer between the hot gas freestream and the cooler surface. In order to improve turbine efficiency, research efforts in film cooling are directed at reducing film cooling flow without decreasing turbine inlet temperatures. Both impingement cooling and film cooling are heavily utilized in combustor liners. Frequently, cooling air first impinges against the back side of the liner, then the spent impingement fluid passes through film cooling holes. This arrangement combines the convective heat transfer of the impinging jets convection as the coolant passes through the film cooling holes and the benefits that come from having a thin film of cool air between the combustor wall and the combustion products. In order to improve the understanding of internal cooling in gas turbine engines, the influence of previously unexplored physical parameters such as compressible flow effects and temperature ratio in impingement flows and variable blowing ratio in a film cooling array must be examined. Prior to this work, there existed in the available literature only an extremely limited exploration of compressibility effects in impingement heat transfer and the results of separately examining the effects of Mach number and Reynolds number. The film cooling literature provides no information for a full array of film cooling holes along a contraction at high blowing ratios. Exploring these effects and conditions adds to the body of available data and allows the validation of numerical predictions.

In modern gas turbine engines, film cooling is extensively used to cool the components exposed to the hot mainstream gas path. In implementing film cooling on modern gas turbine engines, the trailing edge film poses a particularly challenging design problem. From an aerodynamic point of view, the trailing edge of a blade is designed to be as thin as possible. However, this conflicts with the implementation of the cooling design. The most common method of film cooling the trailing edge is via late pressure surface discrete film cooling holes. Another method of cooling the trailing edge is by using discrete pressure surface slots. This thesis documents a comparative aerodynamic and heat transfer study of three trailing edge cooling configurations. The study was carried out using a large scale, low speed wind tunnel situated at the Southwell Laboratory. The three trailing edge cooling configurations considered were as follows. First is the common late pressure film cooling of the trailing edge via discrete film cooling holes. This configuration is designated as datum configuration. Second is the pressure surface slot coolant ejection. This configuration was designated as cast cutback configuration. The third is the pressure surface ejection via discrete film cooling holes within a step cutback. This configuration was designated the machined cutback configuration. The above configurations were incorporated into three flat plates manufactured using stereolithography. In the aerodynamic study, the static pressure distribution and discharge coefficient for the three configurations were compared. Furthermore, two dimensional total pressure measurements were carried out using a traverse mechanism downstream of the test plates. The total pressure measurements were used to compute the mixed out losses for the three configurations. It was found that the datum and machined cutback configurations have similar discharge coefficients and mixed out losses whilst the cast cutback configuration produces greater mixed out loss. The film effectiveness and heat transfer coefficient on the pressure surface downstream of the coolant ejection was obtained using a steady state heat transfer technique. The effectiveness measurements were compared with those from the literature and correlated against the two dimensional slot model. The heat transfer measurements show that the cast cutback configuration has the potential to give higher effectiveness at the trailing edge.

Film cooling is vital for the cooling of the blades and vanes in the high temperature environment of a jet engine high pressure turbine stage. Previous research into film cooling has typically concentrated on its time-mean performance. However, results from other studies upon more simplified geometries, suggest that coherent unsteadiness is likely to also be present in film cooling flows. The research presented in this thesis, therefore, aims to characterise what coherent unsteadiness, if any, is present within film cooling flows. Cylindrical and shaped cooling holes, located upon the pressure surface of a turbine blade within a large scale linear cascade, have been investigated. A blowing ratio range of 0.5 to 2.0 has been investigated, with either a plenum or perpendicular crossflow at the cooling hole inlet. Particle Image Velocimetry, high speed photography and Hot Wire Anemometry have been used to investigate the jet downstream of both cooling holes. The impact of crossflow at the hole inlet upon the flowfield inside both cooling holes has been investigated using Hot Wire Anemometry and a further numerical model solved by applying TBLOCK. The results presented in the current thesis, show the existence of two coherent unsteady structures in the jet downstream of both the cylindrical and the shaped holes. These structures are called shear layer vortices and hairpin vortices, and their formation is dependent on the velocity difference across the jet shear layer. Inside the cooling hole coherent hairpin vortices also appear to occur, with their formation dependent on the direction and magnitude of the crossflow at the hole inlet. The coherent unsteadiness presented here is shown for the first time for film cooling flows, and recommendations to build on the current study, in what is potentially an interesting research area, are made at the end of this thesis.

Certain types of fuel used for combustion in land-based gas turbines can contain traces of ash when introduced into a gas turbine. Examples include synfuel, from the gasification of coal, and heavy fuel oil. When these ash particles travel through the hot gas path of the gas turbine they can deposit on turbine vanes and blades. As deposits grow, they can reduce turbine efficiency and damage turbine hardware. As turbine inlet temperatures increase, ash deposition rates increase as well.Experiments were conducted in the Turbine Accelerated Deposition Facility (TADF) at Brigham Young University to better understand ash deposition behavior at modern turbine inlet temperatures. Experiments were conducted that varied deposition duration, gas temperature, surface temperature, ash type and characteristics, and film-cooling blowing ratio. Analysis included measuring and calculating the capture efficiency, deposit surface roughness, deposit density, and deposit surface temperature. Test results indicate that capture efficiency increases with time and as the gas temperature increases. Previous studies have shown that the capture efficiency increases with increasing surface temperature as well, but the results from this study show that at a gas temperature of 1400°C, the capture efficiency of the ash used in these tests initially increased but then began to decrease with increasing surface temperature. It was also shown that different ashes, with differing ash chemistries and densities, deposit at very different rates and produce different surface structures. The film-cooling tests showed that film cooling does reduce the capture efficiency at modern turbine temperatures, but has a smaller relative effect than at lower temperatures. Tests performed with heavy fuel oil ash and increased SO2 levels (similar to those found in heavy fuel oil combustion environments) indicate that the increased sulfur levels result in the formation of more sulfur compounds in the deposit and change which elements are dissolved by water, but has little effect on the amount of deposit that dissolves. CFD simulations were performed to model the fluid dynamics and particle trajectories in the TADF. The resulting particle impact data (particle impact velocity, temperature, diameter, etc.) were used in sticking models to evaluate the models' performance at high temperatures. Results indicate that while the models can be fit fairly well to specific data, they need to be able to better account for changing surface conditions and high temperature particle behavior to accurately model deposition at high temperatures.

The ability and efficiency of today’s gas turbine engines are highly dependent on development of cooling technologies, among which film cooling is one of the most important. Investigations have been conducted towards discovering different aspects of film cooling, utilizing both experiments and performing CFD simulations. Although, investigation by using CFD analysis is less expensive in general, the results obtained from CFD calculations should be validated by means of experimental results. In addition to validation, in cases like simulating a turbine vane, performing CFD simulations can be time consuming. Therefore, it is essential to find approaches that can reduce the computational cost while results are validated by experiments. This study has shown the potential for reduced models to be utilized for investigation of different aspects of film cooling by means of CFD at low turn-around time. This has been accomplished by first carrying out CFD simulations and experiments for an engine-like setting for a full vane. Then the computational domain is reduced in two steps where all results are compared with experiments including aerodynamic validation, heat transfer coefficient and film effectiveness. While the aerodynamic results are in close agreement with experiments, the heat transfer coefficient and film effectiveness results have also shown similarities within the expected range. Thus this study has shown that this approach can be very useful for e.g. early vane and film cooling design.

This study is an investigation of two specific effects on turbine blade film cooling. The effect of coolant to mainstream density ratio and upstream steps was studied. The studies were conducted on two flat plates with 4mm cylindrical film cooling holes, one with simple angle and the other with compound angle, in a low-speed suction type wind tunnel. Density effect was studied at ratios of 0.93 and 1.47 by using air and CO2 as coolant. An IR camera was used to record the temperature on the plate and T-type thermocouples were used to record the coolant and mainstream temperatures. During the study the nature of the conduction effect from the heated coolant was studied and found to be most prevalent along the plate surface not through the plate from the plenum. A methodology was presented by which conduction error free results were obtained. The results showed an increased effectiveness at higher density ratios, particularly near the holes and for the simple angle plate. Upstream step effect was studied using pressure sensitive paint and a coupled strobe light and camera. Steps of 0.5, 1 and 1.5mm were placed at the upstream edge of the holes. The steps were found to increase effectiveness significantly more than previous studies have shown when placing the step slightly upstream of the holes.

Film cooling effectiveness on a gas turbine blade tip on the near tip pressure side and on the squealer cavity floor is investigated. Optimal arrangement of film cooling holes, effect of a full squealer and a cutback squealer, varying blowing ratios and squealer cavity depth are also examined on film cooling effectiveness. The film-cooling effectiveness distributions are measured on the blade tip, near tip pressure side and the inner pressure and suction side rim walls using a Pressure Sensitive Paint (PSP) technique. A blowing ratio of 1.0 is found to give best results on the pressure side whereas the other tip surfaces give best results for blowing ratios of 2. Film cooling effectiveness tests are also performed on the span of a fully-cooled high pressure turbine blade in a 5 bladed linear cascade using the PSP technique. Film cooling effectiveness over the entire blade region is determined from full coverage film cooling, showerhead cooling and from each individual row with and without an upstream wake. The effect of superposition of film cooling effectiveness from each individual row is then compared with full coverage film cooling. Results show that an upstream wake can result in lower film cooling effectiveness on the blade. Effectiveness magnitudes from superposition of effectiveness data from individual rows are comparable with that from full coverage film cooling. Internal heat transfer measurements are also performed in a high aspect ratio channel and from jet array impingement on a turbulated target wall at large Reynolds numbers. For the channel, three dimple and one discrete rib configurations are tested on one of the wide walls for Reynolds numbers up to 1.3 million. The presence of a turbulated wall and its effect on heat transfer enhancement against a smooth surface is investigated. Heat transfer enhancement is found to decrease at high Re with the discrete rib configurations providing the best enhancement but highest pressure losses. Experiments to investigate heat transfer and pressure loss from jet array impingement are also performed on the target wall at Reynolds numbers up to 450,000. The heat transfer from a turbulated target wall and two jet plates is investigated. A target wall with short pins provides the best heat transfer with the dimpled target wall giving the lowest heat transfer among the three geometries studied.

The present work has been an experimental investigation to evaluate the applicability of gas turbine cooling technology. With the temperature of the mainstream gas entering the turbine elevated above the melting temperature of the metal components, these components must be cooled, so they can withstand prolonged exposure to the mainstream gas. Both external and internal cooling techniques have been studied as a means to increase the life of turbine components. Detailed film cooling effectiveness distributions have been obtained on the turbine blade platform with a variety of cooling configurations. Because the newly developed pressure sensitive paint (PSP) technique has proven to be the most suitable technique for measuring the film effectiveness, it was applied to a variety of platform seal configurations and discrete film flows. From the measurements it was shown advanced seals provide more uniform protection through the passage with less potential for ingestion of the hot mainstream gases into the engine cavity. In addition to protecting the outer surface of the turbine components, via film cooling, heat can also be removed from the components internally. Because the turbine blades are rotating within the engine, it is important to consider the effect of rotation on the heat transfer enhancement within the airfoil cooling channels. Through this experimental investigation, the heat transfer enhancement has been measured in narrow, rectangular channels with various turbulators. The present experimental investigation has shown the turbulators, coupled with the rotation induced Coriolis and buoyancy forces, result in non-uniform levels of heat transfer enhancement in the cooling channels. Advanced turbulator configurations can be used to provide increased heat transfer enhancement. Although these designs result in increased frictional losses, the benefit of the heat transfer enhancement outweighs the frictional losses.