Cooling Characteristic of a Wall Jet for Suppressing Crossflow Effect under Conjugate Heat Transfer Condition

The leading edge is the critical portion for a gas turbine blade and is often insufficiently cooled due to the adverse effect of Crossflow in the cooling chamber. A novel internal cooling structure, wall jet cooling, can suppress Crossflow effect by changing the coolant flow direction. In this paper, the conjugate heat transfer and aerodynamic characteristics of blades with three different internal cooling structures, including impingement with a single row of jets, swirl cooling, and wall jet cooling, are investigated through RANS simulations. The results show that wall jet cooling combines the advantages of impingement cooling and swirl cooling, and has a 19–54% higher laterally-averaged overall cooling effectiveness than the conventional methods at different positions on the suction side. In the blade with wall jet cooling, the spent coolant at the leading edge is extracted away through the downstream channels so that the jet could accurately impinge the target surface without unnecessary mixing, and the high turbulence generated by the separation vortex enhances the heat transfer intensity. The Coriolis force induces the coolant air to adhere to the pressure side’s inner wall surface, preventing the jet from leaving the target surface. The parallel cooling channels eliminate the common Crossflow effect and make the flow distribution of the orifices more uniform. The trailing edge outlet reduces the entire cooling structure’s pressure to a low level, which means less penalty on power output and engine efficiency.