Optimization of the Double-Expansion Film-Cooling Hole Using CFD

Film cooling is a major cooling technique used in modern gas turbines and air engines. The geometry of film-cooling holes is the fundamental aspect affecting the cooling performance. In this paper, a new cooling configuration called the double-expansion film-cooling hole has been put forward, which yields better performance than the widely used shaped holes and is easy to manufacture. The double-expansion holes at inclination angles of α=30∘, 45∘, and 60∘ are optimized using the genetic algorithm and the Kriging surrogate model, which is trained by CFD data randomly sampled using the Latin hypercube method. The numerically optimized double-expansion holes at different inclination angles were experimentally evaluated and compared with the optimized single-expansion laid-back fan-shaped holes, and the optimized double-expansion hole at α=30∘ was manually modified based on experiment results. Compared with the optimal single-expansion holes, the area-averaged cooling effectiveness of the double-expansion holes was increased by 34.5% at α=30∘, by 27.8% at α=45∘, and basically the same at α=60∘, showing the benefit of the double-expansion concept. The loss mechanism of film cooling was also analyzed in the perspective of the entropy generation rate, showing the optimal double-expansion holes have 21% less loss compared to a baseline narrow single-expansion hole. It was also found that CFD sometimes predicts a different trend from the experiment in optimization, and the experimental validation is necessary.