Enhancement of Film Cooling Performance at the Leading Edge of Turbine Blade

To enhance the film cooling performance in the vicinity of the turbine blade leading edge, the flow characteristics of the film-cooled turbine blade have been investigated using a cylindrical body model. The inclination of the cooling holes is along the radius of the cylindrical wall and 20 deg relative to the spanwise direction. Mainstream Reynolds number based on the cylinder diameter was 1.01×10⁵ and 0.69×10⁵, and the mainstream turbulence intensities were about 0.2% in both Reynolds numbers. CO₂ was used as coolant to simulate the effect of density ratio of coolant-to-mainstream. Furthermore, the effect of coolant flow rates was studied for various blowing ratios of 0.4, 0.7, 1.1, and 1.4, respectively. In experiment, spatially-resolved temperature distributions along the cylindrical body surface were visualized using infrared thermography (IRT) in conjunction with thermocouples, digital image processing, and in situ calibration procedures. This comparison shows the results generated to be reasonable and physically meaningful. The film cooling effectiveness of current measurement (0.29 mm × 0.33 min per pixel) presents high spatial and temperature resolutions compared to other studies. Results show that the blowing ratio has a strong effect on film cooling effectiveness and the coolant trajectory is sensitive to the blowing ratio. The local spanwise-averaged effectiveness can be improved by locating the first-row holes near the second-row holes.