Film cooling with swirling coolant flow

Abstract

This paper describes the experimental results of a new film cooling method blowing through circular and shaped film cooling holes with swirling coolant flow. The experiments have been conducted by using a low-speed wind tunnel. The film cooling effectiveness on the flat wall was measured by using pressure sensitive paint (PSP) techniques. In addition, the spatial distribution of the film cooling effectiveness and flow field were measured by leaser induced fluorescence (LIF) and particle image velocimetry (PIV), respectively. In the case of the circular film cooling hole, the coolant jet penetration into the mainstream is suppressed by the swirling motion of the coolant. As a result, although the coolant jet is deflected in the pitch direction, the film cooling effectiveness distribution on the wall keeps a higher value behind the cooling hole over a long range. Additionally, the anti-kidney vortex structure disappeared. For the shaped cooling hole, the coolant jet spreads wider in the spanwise direction at the downstream. Thus, the pitch averaged film cooling effectiveness at the downstream was 50% higher than that of the non-swirling case. © 2010 WIT Press.