Presented at the International Gas Turbine & Aeroengine Congress & Exhibition, Orlando, FL, Jun 2 - Jun 5, 1997.

The effect of wake passing on the showerhead film cooling performance of a turbine blade has been investigated experimentally. The experiments were performed in an annular turbine cascade with an upstream rotating row of cylindrical rods. Nickel thin-film gauges were used to determine local film effectiveness and Nusselt number values for various injectants, blowing ratios, and Strouhal numbers. Results indicated a reduction in film effectiveness with increasing Strouhal number, as well as the expected increase in film effectiveness with blowing ratio. An equation was developed to correlate the span-average film effectiveness data. The primary effect of wake unsteadiness was found to be correlated by a streamwise-constant decrement of 0.094.St. Steady computations were found to be in excellent agreement with experimental Nusselt numbers, but to overpredict experimental film effectiveness values. This is likely due to the inability to match actual hole exit velocity profiles and the absence of a credible turbulence model for film cooling. Heidmann, James D. and Lucci, Barbara L. and Reshotko, Eli Glenn Research Center NASA-TM-107425, NAS 1.15:107425, E-10671 RTOP 505-62-10...

Gas turbines play an extremely important role in fulfilling a variety of power needs and are mainly used for power generation and propulsion applications. The performance and efficiency of gas turbine engines are to a large extent dependent on turbine rotor inlet temperatures: typically, the hotter the better. In gas turbines, the combustion temperature and the fuel efficiency are limited by the heat transfer properties of the turbine blades. However, in pushing the limits of hot gas temperatures while preventing the melting of blade components in high-pressure turbines, the use of effective cooling technologies is critical. Increasing the turbine inlet temperature also increases heat transferred to the turbine blade, and it is possible that the operating temperature could reach far above permissible metal temperature. In such cases, insufficient cooling of turbine blades results in excessive thermal stress on the blades causing premature blade failure. This may bring hazards to the engine's safe operation. Gas Turbine Blade Cooling, edited by Dr. Chaitanya D. Ghodke, offers 10 handpicked SAE International's technical papers, which identify key aspects of turbine blade cooling and help readers understand how this process can improve the performance of turbine hardware.

A comprehensive reference for engineers and researchers, Gas Turbine Heat Transfer and Cooling Technology, Second Edition has been completely revised and updated to reflect advances in the field made during the past ten years. The second edition retains the format that made the first edition so popular and adds new information mainly based on selected published papers in the open literature. See What’s New in the Second Edition: State-of-the-art cooling technologies such as advanced turbine blade film cooling and internal cooling Modern experimental methods for gas turbine heat transfer and cooling research Advanced computational models for gas turbine heat transfer and cooling performance predictions Suggestions for future research in this critical technology The book discusses the need for turbine cooling, gas turbine heat-transfer problems, and cooling methodology and covers turbine rotor and stator heat-transfer issues, including endwall and blade tip regions under engine conditions, as well as under simulated engine conditions. It then examines turbine rotor and stator blade film cooling and discusses the unsteady high free-stream turbulence effect on simulated cascade airfoils. From here, the book explores impingement cooling, rib-turbulent cooling, pin-fin cooling, and compound and new cooling techniques. It also highlights the effect of rotation on rotor coolant passage heat transfer. Coverage of experimental methods includes heat-transfer and mass-transfer techniques, liquid crystal thermography, optical techniques, as well as flow and thermal measurement techniques. The book concludes with discussions of governing equations and turbulence models and their applications for predicting turbine blade heat transfer and film cooling, and turbine blade internal cooling.