Comparison of Numerical Investigations With Measured Heat Transfer Performance of a Film Cooled Turbine Vane

Detailed surface measurements of the heat transfer coefficient and the film cooling effectiveness by application of the transient liquid crystal method were carried out on a heavily film cooled nozzle guide vane (NGV) in a linear cascade wind tunnel at the EPFL as part of the European Research Project TATEF2 (Turbine Aero-Thermal External Flows 2). The external cooling setup included a showerhead cooling scheme and suction and pressure side of the airfoil several rows of fan-shaped cooling holes. By testing two different cooling flow rates at a NGV exit Reynolds number of 1.46E+06, detailed aerodynamic and heat transfer measurement data were obtained that can be used for validation of numerical codes and design tools for cooled airfoils. The data include the NGV surface static pressure distribution and wall heat transfer and film cooling effectiveness obtained by application of the transient liquid crystal technique. An engine representative density ratio between the coolant and the external hot gas flow was achieved by using CO₂ as coolant gas. For the coupled simulation of internal cooling and external flow the numerical model was composed of the cooling air feeding the internal plenum, the cooling holes, and the outer external flow domain. An unstructured mesh was generated for the simulations by applying two different commercial CFD codes (Fluent and CFX). Identical boundary conditions were chosen in order to allow for a direct comparison of both codes. The computations were carried in two ways, first using a built-in transition model and second by imposing fully turbulent flow starting at the leading edge. For both codes the same built-in turbulence models were applied. The computations were set up to solve for the aerodynamic flow quantities both within and around the test model and for the thermal quantities on the vane surface, i.e. heat transfer coefficient and film cooling effectiveness. The computational results from the two codes are compared and validated against the results from the experiments. The numerical results were able to confirm a suspicion that the cross flow in the feeding plenum causes an observed non-symmetry of the measured film cooling effectiveness at the outlet of some cooling holes.