Experimental Study of Heat Transfer Augmentation Near the Entrance to a Film Cooling Hole in a Turbine Blade Cooling Passage

Film cooling is extensively used by modern gas turbine blade designers as a means of limiting the blade temperature when exposed to extreme combustor outlet temperatures. The following paper describes an experimental study of heat transfer near the entrance to a film cooling hole in a turbine blade cooling passage. Steady state heat transfer results were acquired by using a transient measurement technique in a 40 times actual rectangular channel, representative of an internal cooling channel of a turbine blade. Platinum thin film gauges were used to measure the inner surface heat transfer augmentation as a result of thermal boundary layer renewal and impingement near the entrance of a film cooling hole. Measurements were taken at various suction ratios, extraction angles, and wall temperature ratios with a main duct Reynolds number of 25,000. A numerical technique based on the resolution of the unsteady conduction equation, using a Crank–Nicholson scheme, is used to obtain the surface heat flux from the measured surface temperature history. Computational fluid dynamics predictions were also made to provide better understanding of the near-hole flow. The results show extensive heat transfer enhancement as a function of extraction angle and suction ratio in the near-hole region and demonstrate good agreement with a corresponding study. Furthermore it was shown that the effect of a wall-to-coolant ratio is of a second order and can therefore be considered negligible compared with the primary variables such as the suction ratio and extraction angle.o