Experimental and Computational Investigation of Film Cooling Performance and External Flowfield Effects Due to Impingement Coolant Feed in the Leading Edge of a Turbine Blade

The effects that leading-edge impingement coolant feeds have on the external flowfield and on film cooling performance in the showerhead have not been studied thoroughly in the literature. To isolate the influence of the impingement feed, experimental adiabatic effectiveness and off-the-wall thermal field measurements were made using a shaped hole geometry fed by an ideal plenum coolant feed and by an engine-realistic impingement coolant feed. The impingement configuration exhibited around 10% higher adiabatic effectiveness levels than the plenum configuration did—a finding in agreement with the few studies isolating this effect. computational fluid dynamics (CFD) Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) simulations of the impingement and the pseudo-plenum configurations from a companion study were consulted to investigate the root cause of this difference in performance because the experimental data alone did not sufficiently explain it. In the impingement feed simulation, flow remained better attached throughout the hole (both at the inlet and at the diffuser) due to a rotation caused by the impingement flow, leading to better attachment on the exterior surface. This was most significant for the suction-side holes at higher blowing ratios, wherein the pseudo-plenum caused much more severe separation in the holes than the impingement configuration did.