Numerical Study on the Effects of Freestream Turbulence on Antivortex Film Cooling Design at High Blowing Ratio

An advanced, high-effectiveness film cooling design, the antivortex hole (AVH) has been investigated by several research groups and shown to mitigate or counter the vorticity generated by conventional holes and increase film effectiveness at high blowing ratios and low freestream turbulence levels. The effects of increased turbulence on an AVH geometry were previously investigated in a preliminary steady computational fluid dynamics (CFD) study by Hunley et al. on the film effectiveness and net heat flux reduction (NHFR) at high blowing ratio. The current paper presents the results of an extended numerical parametric study, which attempts to separate the effects of turbulence intensity and length scale on film cooling performance of the AVH concept at high blowing ratio (2.0) and density ratio (2.0). In this extended study, steady Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) analysis was performed with turbulence intensities of 5, 10, and 20% and length scales based on cooling hole diameter of Λx/dm = 1, 3, and 6. Increasing turbulence intensity was shown to increase the centerline, span-averaged, and area-averaged adiabatic film cooling effectiveness and NHFR. Larger turbulent length scales in the steady RANS analysis were shown to have little to no effect on the centerline, span-averaged, and area-averaged adiabatic film cooling effectiveness and NHFR at lower turbulence levels, but moderate effect at the highest turbulence levels investigated. Heat transfer results were in good agreement with the findings from adiabatic cases from previous work. Unsteady RANS results also provided supplementary flow visualization for the AVH film cooling flow under varying turbulence levels.