Influence of Internal Flow on Film Cooling Effectiveness

Film cooling experiments were conducted to investigate the effects of internal flow conditions and plenum geometry on the film cooling effectiveness. The film cooling measurements show a strong influence of the coolant inlet conditions on film cooling performance. The present experiments were carried out on a flat plate with a row of cylindrical holes oriented at 30 deg with respect to a constant-velocity external flow, systematically varying the plenum geometry and blowing rates 0.5⩽M⩽1.25. Adiabatic film cooling measurements using the multiple narrow-banded thermochromic liquid crystal technique (TLC) were carried out, simulating a flow parallel to the mainstream flow with and without crossflow at the coolant hole entry compared with a standard plenum configuration. An impingement in front of the cooling hole entry with and without crossflow was also investigated. For all parallel flow configurations, ribs were installed at the top and bottom coolant channel wall. As the hole length-to-diameter ratio has an influence on the film cooling effectiveness, the wall thickness has also been varied. In order to optimize the benefit of the geometry effects with ribs, a vortex generator was designed and tested. Results from these experiments show in a region 5⩽X/D⩽80 downstream of the coolant injection location differences in adiabatic film cooling effectiveness between +5 percent and +65 percent compared with a standard plenum configuration. [S0889-504X(00)01102-8]