Film Cooling Effectiveness Comparison on Full-Scale Turbine Vane Endwalls Using Pressure-Sensitive Paint Technique

Turbine vane endwalls are highly susceptible to intensive heat load due to their large exposed area and complex flow field especially for the first stage of the vane. Therefore, a suitable film cooling design that properly distributes the given amount of coolant is critical to keep the vane endwall from failure at the same time to maintain a good balance between manufacturing cost, performance, and durability. This work is focused on film cooling effectiveness evaluation on full-scale heavy-duty turbine vane endwall and the performance comparison with different film cooling pattern designs in the literature. The area of interest (AOI) of this study is on the inner endwall (hub) of turbine vane. Tests were performed in a three-vane annular sector cascade under the mainstream Reynolds number 350,000; the related inlet Mach number is 0.09 and the freestream turbulence intensity is 12%. Two variables, coolant-to-mainstream mass flow ratios (MFR = 2–4%) and density ratios (DR = 1.0, 1.5), are investigated. The conduction-error free pressure-sensitive paint (PSP) technique is utilized to evaluate the local flow behavior as well as the film cooling performance. The presented results are expected to provide the gas turbine engine designer a direct comparison between two film-hole configurations on a full-scale vane endwall under the same amount of coolant usage.