Numerical predictions of flow and heat transfer of film cooling with an internal channel roughened by crescent ribs

This study explores the effects of crescent ribs mounted in an internal cooling channel on the external adiabatic film cooling performance to evaluate the advantage of crescent ribs in gas turbine blade cooling. Three ribs including a transverse rib, a crescent rib concave to the stream-wise direction, and a crescent rib convex to the stream-wise direction are considered. For a fixed mainstream flow Reynolds number, two cross-flow Reynolds numbers and two blowing ratios are taken into account. The results show that the case with a crescent rib concave to the stream-wise direction provides higher film cooling effectiveness both at the lower cross-flow Reynolds number and at the higher cross-flow Reynolds number with higher blowing ratio while the case with a crescent rib convex to the stream-wise direction performs worst at any condition. It is found that the longitudinal vortices produced by crescent ribs concave to the stream-wise direction can promote the cooling air entering the film hole while that induced by the other crescent ribs are nonbeneficial for the cooling air entering the hole. The results indicated that a lower spiral intensity leads to counter-rotating vortices with lower intensity and thus results in better cooling effectiveness. However, it makes a narrow coverage of the target surface by the coolant, which leads to disadvantages upon the cooling performance. The relative merits among the cases at different cross-flow Reynolds numbers and blowing ratios are investigated based on the dominating mechanism.