Abstract

This work presents the performance of a louver film-cooling scheme under different operating conditions. The louver cooling scheme consists of a bend by which the coolant going through the flow passage is redirected from vertical to horizontal direction before being injected into the mainstream through an expanded exit. Not only is the momentum of the coolant converted to the mainstream direction, but it is also reduced by the expanded exit before injection. The impingement of the coolant on the blade surface inside the bend also enables further cooling on the targeted surface. The louver cooling scheme was tested under a variety of conditions, from a flat plate to airfoils, from low speed incompressible flows to transonic flows, from a stationary airfoil to a rotating airfoil, and from the leading edge to the middle of an airfoil. Unsteady analysis using a DES (Detached Eddy Simulation) model was also carried out to evaluate its ability to accurately simulate film cooling by comparing with steady state analysis. In general, the louver cooling scheme has been proved to provide enhanced cooling protection to the targeted surface in comparison with other cooling schemes in all conditions tested. At low speed incompressible flow conditions, a higher blowing ratio led to a higher cooling effectiveness. At transonic flow conditions, a moderately higher blowing ratio also proved helpful with a higher cooling effectiveness. Very high blowing ratios, however, proved to be detrimental to the cooling performance since strong detached shock wave structures due to high blowing ratios caused boundary layer separation, rendering the coolant virtually ineffective. The rotation of blade was found to have a significant impact on the level of cooling effectiveness at the leading edge of an airfoil. With regard to the cooling performance, blowing ratio was the dominant factor at low rotational speeds and the rotational speed was the dominant factor at high blowing ratios for circular holes. For the louver scheme as jet liftoff was avoided, effectiveness increased with rotating speed. Results also showed that, unsteady analysis was not significantly more accurate than steady analysis. The unsteady analysis did capture the coolant lateral spreading better, with a high cost of computing, however. Results in this work show that shock waves encountered on transonic airfoils had a significant impact on film cooling effectiveness on any shaped holes. Therefore, experimental data obtained under low speed test should be used with great caution in real design of turbine blade cooling. There are fundamental differences in film cooling between at the leading edge and elsewhere on an airfoil in that a slight incidence shifting due to turbine rotating speed may cause a sudden decrease in cooling effectiveness level at high blowing ratios for circular hole. This could lead to a catastrophic failure if the blade is already in a weak and stressed state. Using of shaped holes with expanded exits may prevent this from happening.