An Experimental Study of Turbine Vane Film Cooling Using Endoscope-Based PSP Technique in a Single-Passage Wind Tunnel

Abstract

Limited optical access has been a challenge in gas-turbine related researches since the small blade pitch makes it difficult to arrange the camera at a proper viewing angle. In this paper, the application of an endoscopic system in a single-passage wind tunnel is presented. The film cooling effectiveness over the turbine vane’s pressure side with two types of holes was measured using the pressure-sensitive paint (PSP) technique. With the 7-7-7 shaped hole serving as the baseline, the sister shaped hole was compared side-by-side to examine its cooling performance at exit Ma = 0.84. Carbon dioxide (i.e., DR = 1.53) as coolant was discharged into the flow passage through two rows of holes (i.e., 4D spacing between holes and 1.5D spacing between rows) with blowing ratio (M) varied from 0.6 to 2.0. Through the implementation of the homography algorithm, the distorted coolant traces were recovered from the cambered surface. It was found that the film cooling effectiveness of both holes was greatly influenced by the blowing ratio. The sister shaped hole exhibited a relatively high effectiveness distribution at low M but its effectiveness decreased at high M due to the coolant jet detachment. In contrast, the 7-7-7 shaped hole demonstrated significantly higher effectiveness at high M, which can be attributed to the lower momentum flux ratio results of its larger exit area. The endoscope-based PSP technique and the obtained adiabatic effectiveness results may lay the foundation for other investigations and support other CFD studies in the gas turbine community.