Effects of Showerhead Cooling on Turbine Vane Suction Side Film Cooling Effectiveness

The process of film cooling is known to severely disturb the boundary layer around a turbine airfoil. Since most film-cooled airfoils have more than one injection station, the flow field approaching a row of film cooling holes could be altered by the presence of an upstream cooling station. To investigate this possibility, an experimental investigation was conducted on the suction side of a scaled-up turbine vane. Adiabatic effectiveness measurements were made downstream of a single row of cooling holes both with and without the upstream showerhead holes operating. A range of suction side blowing ratios, 0.3 ≤ M ≤ 1.3, were investigated with large-scale mainstream turbulence intensities of Tu∞ = 0.5% and Tu∞ = 21%. The effects of the showerhead coolant were evaluated at an engine-typical showerhead blowing ratio of Msh = 1.6, with three of the six rows of cooling holes in the showerhead directed towards the suction side of the airfoil. Experiments were conducted with a coolant-to-mainstream density ratio of DR = 1.6. An infrared camera was used to obtain spatially-resolved surface temperature measurements, which were corrected for conduction effects and converted to adiabatic effectiveness. The results showed that showerhead coolant had a strong impact on suction side adiabatic effectiveness levels under low mainstream turbulence. Although effectiveness levels increased with the showerhead operating, the suction side coolant jets increased dispersion of the showerhead coolant. Under high mainstream turbulence conditions, there was very little interaction between the showerhead coolant and the suction side coolant jets. Adiabatic effectiveness levels were considerably lower than those for the low turbulence case, which was partially due to increased dispersion of the showerhead coolant upstream of the suction side holes. The superposition model over-predicted adiabatic effectiveness levels under low mainstream turbulence conditions, but was very effective in predicting the combined performance of the showerhead and the suction side cooling holes under high mainstream turbulence conditions.