Experimental/Numerical Investigation on the Effects of Trailing-Edge Cooling Hole Blockage on Heat Transfer in a Trailing-Edge Cooling Channel

Hot and harsh environments, sometimes experienced by gas turbine airfoils, can create undesirable effects such as clogging of the cooling holes. Clogging of the cooling holes along the trailing edge of an airfoil on the tip side and its effects on the heat transfer coefficients in the cooling cavity around the clogged holes is the main focus of this investigation. Local and average heat transfer coefficients were measured in a test section simulating a rib-roughened trailing edge cooling cavity of a turbine airfoil. The rig was made up of two adjacent channels, each with a trapezoidal cross sectional area. The first channel supplied the cooling air to the trailing-edge channel through a row of racetrack-shaped slots on the partition wall between the two channels. Eleven cross-over jets, issued from these slots entered the trailing-edge channel, impinged on eleven radial ribs and exited from a second row of race-track shaped slots on the opposite wall that simulated the cooling holes along the trailing edge of the airfoil. Tests were run for the baseline case with all exit holes open and for cases in which 2, 3 and 4 exit holes on the airfoil tip side were clogged. All tests were run for two cross-over jet angles. The first set of tests were run for zero angle between the jet axis and the trailing-edge channel centerline. The jets were then tilted towards the ribs by five degrees. Results of the two set of tests for a range of jet Reynolds number from 10,000 to 35,000 were compared. The numerical models contained the entire trailing-edge and supply channels with all slots and ribs to simulate exactly the tested geometries. They were meshed with all-hexa structured mesh of high near-wall concentration. A pressure-correction based, multi-block, multi-grid, unstructured/adaptive commercial software was used in this investigation. The realizable k – ε turbulence model in combination with enhanced wall treatment approach for the near wall regions were used for turbulence closure. Boundary conditions identical to those of the experiments were applied and several turbulence model results were compared. The numerical analyses also provided the share of each cross-over and each exit hole from the total flow for different geometries. The major conclusions of this study were: a) Clogging of the exit holes near the airfoil tip alters the distribution of the coolant mass flow rate through the crossover holes and changes the flow structure. Depending on the number of clogged exit holes (from 3 to 6, out of 12), the tip-end crossover hole experienced from 35% to 49% reductions in its mass flow rate while the root-end crossover hole, under the same conditions, experienced an increase of the same magnitude in its mass flow rate, b) up to 64% reduction in heat transfer coefficients on the tip-end surface areas around the clogged holes were observed which might have devastating effects on the airfoil life. At the same time, a gain in heat transfer coefficient of up 40% was observed around the root-end due to increased crossover flows, c) Numerical heat transfer results with the use of the realizable k – ε turbulence model in combination with enhanced wall treatment approach for the near wall regions were generally in a reasonable agreement with the test results. The overall difference between the CFD and test results was about 10%.