Experimental investigations on the heat transfer characteristic of impingement/swirl cooling structures inside turbine blade leading edge

Experimental investigations were performed to study the heat transfer characteristics of impingement/swirl cooling structures inside a turbine leading edge (LE) as measured using the transient thermochromic liquid crystal (TLC) technique. The considered Reynolds numbers (Re) were 10,000, 20,000, and 30,000, and the effects of Re and the ratio of the impingement cooling hole offset distance to the impingement cooling hole diameter (e/d) on the heat transfer performance of the impingement/swirl cooling structures inside the blade LE were analyzed. The effects of the coolant outflow mode were also considered. The results show that the heat transfer intensity of the high heat transfer region of impingement/swirl cooling structures increases with Re. The e/d on the local Nusselt number (Nu) distributions for the two shooting areas are similar under different Re conditions. Changes in e/d significantly influence the heat transfer characteristics. As e/d increases from -1.5 to 1.5, the heat transfer effect and thermal uniformity of the LE inner wall chamber improved. Comparative analyses with the experimental results of the LE model without film cooling holes show that the thermal uniformity of the LE model significantly improves when including film cooling holes.