Experimental Investigation of Louver Cooling Scheme on Gas Turbine Stator

An experimental investigation has been conducted to investigate the film cooling performance of the louver scheme over the surface of a gas turbine stator using a transient thermochromic liquid crystal technique. A two-dimensional airfoil cascade has been employed during the study. The exit Reynolds number based on the true chord length is 1.5E5 and the exit Mach number is 0.23. Two rows of an axially oriented louver scheme are distributed on both suction and pressure sides in a staggered arrangement. The effect of hole location on the cooling performance is investigated for each row individually; then row interaction is investigated at four different blowing ratios ranging from 1 to 2 and a 0.9 density ratio. The detailed local performance distribution and the lateral-averaged normalized performance are presented over both sides of the vane in terms of heat transfer coefficient and cooling effectiveness. The louver scheme provides a better cooling performance compared with the similar cylindrical scheme of the same base diameter at the same cooling amount. The blowing ratio does not influence significantly the performance for the louver scheme due to the considerable decrease in the jet momentum that impedes the jet lift-off at exit. The location of the scheme exit has a high impact on the cooling performance as it affects the development of the boundary layer. The double injection on the pressure side provides a superior effectiveness due to the blockage of the mainstream by the coolant injected from the first row. The louver scheme provides higher net heat flux reduction, which suits the cooling capacity needed for the next generation of gas turbines.