Influence of passage flow on tip film cooling characteristics

Three-dimensional simulations of the squealer tip on the GE-E3 blade with eight film cooling holes were carried out. The effect of different blade spans and different blowing ratios on the tip flow and cooling performance was revealed with the k-ε model. For the squealer tip, the depth of the cavity and the height of the tip clearance were fixed, the influence of different spans (10%, 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% span) on the tip heat transfer was investigated. It was found that the velocity field above the blade tip and the heat transfer distribution on the groove floor for the 10% span (cut-back span) model had no difference from that for the 100% span (whole span) model obviously. However, the leakage flow for the 10% span model showed larger interaction with the passage flow. With different spans, the effect of different blowing ratios, i.e., M=0.4, 0.8 and 1.2, was investigated. Increasing the blowing ratio (from M=0.4 to 1.2) increased the film cooling effectiveness and made the heat transfer coefficients of all the models smaller. Because the cut-back model for the 10% span had similar tip flow field with the 100% span model, the simulation for the 10% span model could be used to find out the tip flow and heat transfer for the 100% span model.