Large Eddy Simulation of Film Cooling Flow From an Inclined Cylindrical Jet

Predictions of turbine blade film cooling have traditionally employed Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes solvers and two-equation models for turbulence. Evaluation of several versions of such models have revealed that the existing two-equation models fail to resolve the anisotropy and the dynamics of the highly complex flow field created by the jet-crossflow interaction. A more accurate prediction of the flow field can be obtained from large eddy simulations (LES) where the dynamics of the larger scales in the flow are directly resolved. In the present paper, such an approach has been used, and results are presented for a row of inclined cylindrical holes at blowing ratios of 0.5 and 1 and Reynolds numbers of 11,100 and 22,200, respectively, based on the jet velocity and hole diameter. Comparison of the time-averaged LES predictions with the flow measurements of Lavrich and Chiappetta (UTRC Report No. 90-04) shows that LES is able to predict the flow field with reasonable accuracy. The unsteady three-dimensional flow field is shown to be dominated by packets of hairpin-shaped vortices. The dynamics of the hairpin vortices in the wake region of the injected jet and their influence on the unsteady wall heat transfer are presented. Generation of “hot spots” and their migration on the film-cooled surface are associated with the entrainment induced by the hairpin structures. Several geometric properties of a “mixing interface” around hairpin coherent structures are presented to illustrate and quantify their impact on the entrainment rates and mixing processes in the wake region.