Film cooling and heat transfer performance of a fully-cooled turbine vane at varied density ratios and mass flow ratios

A number of experimental studies have been performed to study the effect of geometric and aerodynamic parameters on the film cooling performance on the flat plate and turbine blade, however, the experimental investigations on a fully-cooled turbine vane is limited, especially at different density ratios. Consequently, an experiment on a fully-cooled turbine vane with multi-row film cooling holes was carried out to investigate the effect of mass flow ratio and density ratio on the film cooling performance, in which the film cooling effectiveness and heat transfer coefficient was measured by transient liquid crystal. The mainstream inlet Reynolds number based on the inlet velocity and the true chord length is 120000 and the mainstream turbulence intensity is 15%, three mass flow ratios of 5.5%, 8.4% and 11% and two density ratios of 1.0 and 1.5 were tested. The air was selected as the mainstream, the air and carbon dioxide were independently selected as secondary flow to produce two density ratios of 1.0 and 1.5. The test vane is similar in geometry to a first stage turbine vane of a normal aeroengine. Two cavities were manufactured in the test vane to feed 18 rows of film cooling holes. Results show that with the mass flow ratio increasing for DR=1.0 and 1.5, the film cooling effectiveness on pressure side gradually increases, however, that on the suction side gradually decreases. Generally, increased density ratio produces higher film cooling effectiveness because the injection momentum was reduced, however, the film cooling effectiveness on the suction side for DR=1.5 is lower than that for DR=1.0. The coolant outflow significantly enhances the surface heat transfer coefficient for 0<S/C<0.5 and S/C <-0.5. The heat transfer coefficient in the leading edge is less affected by the density ratio, however, the increase in density ratio reduces the heat transfer coefficient ratio in other regions, especially for large mass flow ratios.