Session: 12-13 Advanced film cooling enabled by additive manufacturing

Paper Number: 124085

124085 - Integration of Cooling Holes Into a Turbine Vane Made Using Additive Manufacturing 

Additive manufacturing (AM) has emerged as a method to prototype novel cooling designs with complex internal and film cooling geometries. Creating engine scale features with AM comes with challenges that impact flow and heat transfer, which consequently affect the overall assessment of the component. While AM has proven to be faster and more cost effective over traditional casting methods, the scalability of AM continues to require more investigation. The purpose of this study was to integrate film-cooling hole designs first tested through lab-scale coupons into a true-scale turbine vane to assess overall cooling effectiveness. The National Experimental Turbine (NExT) vane was additively manufactured with a singular cooling passage feeding two rows of film-cooling holes: a row of baseline 7-7-7 holes; and a row of holes containing both parametrically optimized 15-15-1 holes and modified adjoint optimized cross flow (X-AOpt) holes. The internal passage was designed to have a section with ribs and a section without ribs to assess how internal features impact the hole shape’s cooling effectiveness. The airfoil was tested in the Steady Thermal Aero Research Turbine (START) rig at a range of film cooling blowing ratios. A combination of computed tomography (CT) scanning and infrared (IR) thermal imaging measurements was used to evaluate how as-built geometries impacted the overall cooling effectiveness for each hole group. The 15-15-1 non-ribbed film cooling holes had the highest cooling effectiveness when compared to an averaged effectiveness upstream of each hole group, and was the least affected by blowing ratio changes. This study of engine-scale cooling designs advances the idea that internal and cooling-hole geometries need to be optimized together.

Presenting Author: Nicholas Gailey The Pennsylvania State University

Presenting Author Biography: Nick Gailey is a Ph.D. candidate at The Pennsylvania State University in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. He holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Penn State. His current research at the Steady Thermal Aero Research Turbine (START) Lab investigates channel and film cooling of additively manufactured components compared to traditional cast components. Previously, he has worked on IR imaging of rotating engine operated blades and heat flux implementation.

Authors:

Nicholas L. Gailey The Pennsylvania State University
Michael D. Barringer The Pennsylvania State University
Reid A. Berdanier The Pennsylvania State University
Karen A. Thole The Pennsylvania State University