Aerodynamic Losses in Turbines with and without Film Cooling, as Influenced by Mainstream Turbulence, Surface Roughness, Airfoil Shape, and Mach Number

Abstract EN

The influences of a variety of different physical phenomena are described as they affect the aerodynamic performance of turbine airfoils in compressible, high-speed flows with either subsonic or transonic Mach number distributions.

The presented experimental and numerically predicted results are from a series of investigations which have taken place over the past 32 years.

Considered are (i) symmetric airfoils with no film cooling, (ii) symmetric airfoils with film cooling, (iii) cambered vanes with no film cooling, and (iv) cambered vanes with film cooling.

When no film cooling is employed on the symmetric airfoils and cambered vanes, experimentally measured and numerically predicted variations of freestream turbulence intensity, surface roughness, exit Mach number, and airfoil camber are considered as they influence local and integrated total pressure losses, deficits of local kinetic energy, Mach number deficits, area-averaged loss coefficients, mass-averaged total pressure loss coefficients, omega loss coefficients, second law loss parameters, and distributions of integrated aerodynamic loss.

Similar quantities are measured, and similar parameters are considered when film-cooling is employed on airfoil suction surfaces, along with film cooling density ratio, blowing ratio, Mach number ratio, hole orientation, hole shape, and number of rows of holes.