Experimental measurement of overall effectiveness and internal coolant temperatures for a film cooled gas turbine airfoil with internal impingement cooling

A scaled-up gas turbine vane model was constructed in such a way to achieve a Biot number (Bi) representative of an actual engine component, and experiments were performed to collect temperature data which may be used to validate computational fluid dynamics (CFD) codes used in the design of gas turbine cooling schemes. The physical model incorporated an internal impingement plate to provide cooling on the inner wall surface, and film cooling over the external surface was provided by a single row of holes located on the suction side of the vane. A single row of holes was chosen to simplify the operating condition and test geometry for the purpose of evaluating CFD predictions. Thermocouples were used to measure internal gas temperatures and internal surface temperatures over a range of coolant flow rates, while infra-red thermography was used to measure external surface temperatures. When Bi is matched to an actual engine component, these measured temperatures may be normalized relative to the coolant temperature and mainstream gas temperature to determine the overall cooling effectiveness, which will be representative of the real engine component. Measurements were made to evaluate the overall effectiveness resulting from internal impingement cooling alone, and then with both internal impingement cooling and external film cooling as the coolant flow rate was increased. As expected, with internal impingement cooling alone, both internal and external wall surfaces became colder as the coolant flow rate was increased. The addition of film cooling further increased the overall effectiveness, particularly at the lower and intermediate flow rates tested, but provided little benefit at the highest flow rates. An optimal jet momentum flux ratio of I=1.69 resulted in a peak overall effectiveness, although the film effectiveness was shown to be low under these conditions. The effect of increasing the coolant-to-mainstream density ratio was evaluated at one coolant flow rate and resulted in higher values of overall cooling effectiveness and normalized internal temperatures, throughout the model. Finally, a 1-dimensional heat transfer analysis was performed (using a resistance analogy) in which overall effectiveness with film cooling was predicted from measurements of film effectiveness and overall effectiveness without film cooling. This analysis tended to over-predict overall effectiveness, at the lowest values of the jet momentum flux ratio, while under-predicting it at the highest values.