A Flow Field Study of a Film Cooling Hole Featuring an Orifice

• Main Author: Zheng, Yingjie
• Format: Others
• Published: 2013
• Online Access: http://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/978113/1/Zheng_MASc_S2014.pdf; Zheng, Yingjie <http://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/view/creators/Zheng=3AYingjie=3A=3A.html> (2013) A Flow Field Study of a Film Cooling Hole Featuring an Orifice. Masters thesis, Concordia University.

Film cooling is a jet-in-crossflow application in gas turbines used to protect high temperature parts. Understanding the physical phenomena in the flow field, for example the detrimental counter-rotating vortex pair, is highly critical. Experimental investigations were conducted using stereoscopic PIV to study the flow field downstream from film cooling holes featuring an orifice, under blowing ratios from 0.5 to 2.0. The original geometry of a short injection hole that was proposed in a previous numerical study was examined. The results reported a significant reduction in counter-rotating vortex pair strength of nozzle hole injection in comparison with cylindrical hole injection. The streamwise vorticity of the nozzle hole jet averaged a drop of 55% at a low blowing ratio of 0.5, and a 30%–40% drop at high blowing ratios of 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0. Due to the reduction in counter-rotating vortex pair strength, a round jet bulk was observed forming from the two legs of a typical kidney-shaped jet. The merged jet bulk delivered better coverage over the surface. The effect of the geometrical parameters of the orifice and the effect of the blowing ratio were also investigated using long injection hole geometry to isolate the impact of the short hole length. It was found that under high blowing ratio conditions, no structural difference occurred in the jet when altering the value of blowing ratio. The most important geometrical parameters were the opening width and the in-hole position of the orifice. The measurement results suggested that the width of the orifice had a major impact on downstream counter-rotating vortex pair strength, and the in-hole position of the orifice mainly affected the penetration characteristics of the jet. The mechanism of the counter-rotating vortex suppressing effect of the orifice was studied from the flow field data. It is proven that the orifice greatly eliminated the hanging vortices developing from the in-hole boundary layer vorticity, which was the major contributor to counter-rotating vortex formation in inclined jets.