Study of Film Cooling Effectiveness on a Double-Walled Effusion-Cooled Turbine Blade in a High-Speed Flow Using Pressure Sensitive Paint

Abstract A detailed analysis of film cooling performance on a double-walled effusion-cooled blade is essential for both the coolant consumption optimization and assessment of the film to offer the desired levels of the turbine blade protection. Yet there are hardly any film effectiveness studies on double-wall full-coverage film cooled turbine blades. This paper presents a detailed film cooling effectiveness study over the full surface of a double-walled effusion-cooled high-pressure turbine rotor blade using Pressure Sensitive Paint (PSP). PSP permitted a non-intrusive and conduction-errors-free means of obtaining clean and distinct local distribution of film effectiveness on the blade surface making it possible to extract valuable film cooling effectiveness performance data on the whole blade surface. Three large-scale circular pedestal double-wall blade designs with varying pedestal height, pedestal diameter and cooling hole diameter were tested in a high-speed stationary single-blade linear cascade running at engine-representative Mach and Reynolds numbers. All the blades were tested within a range of representative modern engine coolant mass flow, ṁc to mainstream, ṁg ratios; 1.6% < ṁc/ṁ∞ < 5.5%. High porosity blade exhibited a better flow distribution and was found to consistently perform the best.