The Effects of Channel Supplies on Overall Film-Cooling Effectiveness

Abstract

Cooling components in the hot section of a gas turbine is essential to component durability. Common methods of cooling include rib turbulators in internal passages and film cooling on external surfaces. The holes that produce the film cooling are fed from the internal channels often containing ribs. Consequently, there is an interdependence of internal heat transfer and external film cooling. The purpose of this study was to obtain a better understanding of the interaction of ribs and film cooling. To quantify the cooling performance the surface temperatures were measured from which overall effectiveness was calculated. For the experiments, additively manufactured test coupons were made of Inconel 718 to match engine Biot numbers. These test coupons had internal feed channels with and without ribs and had both cylindrical holes and meter diffuser shaped holes with 15° lateral expansion angles and a 1° forward expansion angle. A single rectangular channel was one type of feed channel. The other type of feed channels was individual circular channels with each circular channel supplying an individual film-cooling hole. The experimental results showed that the circular individual channels have 80% higher baseline overall effectiveness than the single rectangular channel without any film cooling. Ribbed turbulators without film cooling also increased the overall effectiveness by 21% for single rectangular channel and by 29% for the circular individual channels compared to the respective non-ribbed channels. Overall, a less effective supply channel will have a greater benefit from film-cooling than a highly effective supply channel.