| Summary: | The continuous drive for ever higher turbine entry temperatures is leading to considerable interest in high performance cooling systems which offer high cooling effectiveness with low coolant utilisation.
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The double-wall system discussed here, is an optimised amalgamation of more conventional cooling methods including impingement cooling, pedestals, and film cooling holes in a more closely packed array characteristic of effusion cooling. The system entails two walls, one with the impingement holes, and the other with the film holes. These are mechanically connected via the bank of pedestal thereby allowing conduction between the walls and increasing coolant wetted area and turbulent flow. However, in the open literature, data — and particularly experimental data — on such systems is sparse.
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This study presents a newly commissioned experimental heat transfer facility designed to investigate double-wall cooling geometries. The paper discusses some of the key features of the steady-state facility, including the use of infrared thermography to obtain overall cooling effectiveness measurements. The facility is designed to achieve both Reynolds and Biot (to within 10%) number similarity to those seen at engine conditions.
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The facility is used to obtain overall cooling effectiveness measurements for a circular pedestal, double-wall test piece at three coolant mass-flow conditions with the results presented and discussed. A fully conjugate CFD model of the facility was also developed providing greater insight into the internal flow field. Additionally, a computationally efficient, decoupled conjugate method developed by the authors for analysing such double-wall systems is run at conditions to match the experiments. The results of the simulations are encouraging, particularly given how computationally efficient the method is, with area-weighted, averaged overall effectiveness within a small margin of those obtained from the experimental facility.
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