Experimental and Numerical Study of the Thermal Performance of a Film Cooled Turbine Platform

Detailed surface measurements of the thermal performance of a film cooling system have been performed on the endwall of a nozzle guide vane (NGV) mounted in a linear cascade facility at EPFL. An external cooling scheme including several rows of fan-shaped and cylindrical cooling holes has been designed. By testing different cooling flow rates at a NGV exit Reynolds number of 1.7E+06 and Mach number of 0.88, detailed aerodynamic and heat transfer values were obtained destined to assess the design tools for film cooled platforms. The surface static pressure distribution and the film cooling effectiveness on the endwall surface have been experimentally determined. The measurements were obtained applying the pressure sensitive paint technique measuring the coolant gas concentration. An engine representative density ratio between the coolant and the external hot gas flow was achieved by the injection of CO₂. The working conditions of the test case similar to realistic engine conditions allow for the validation of in-house CFD codes and the investigation of the reliability of modern commercial tools in such a complex cooling system. The numerical campaign has been performed on the same numerical grid, using the commercial codes FLUENT and CFX, used by EPFL and MTU respectively. A detailed analysis of the grid effects on the obtained results has been previously realised as well as the study of the influence of the modelling approximations. Three cooling mass flows have been simulated and the performance parameters of the film cooling system have been compared to the experimentally obtained data. Special emphasis has been put on the jet penetration effects and on the interaction of secondary flows with the coolant flow. The experimental and numerical efforts were part of the EU funded research project TATEF2 (Turbine Aero-Thermal External Flows 2).