Film cooling and thermal field measurements for staggered rows of rectangular-shaped film cooling holes

An experimental study has been conducted to measure the temperature fields and the local film cooling effectiveness for two and three staggered rows of the rectangular-shaped film cooling holes with various blowing rates. Three different cooling hole shapes such as a straight rectangular hole, a rectangular hole with laterally expanded exit and a circular hole are tested. The rectangular cross-section has the aspect ratio of 2 at the hole inlet with the hydraulic diameter of 10 mm. The area ratio of the exit to the hole inlet is 1.8 for the rectangular hole with expanded exit, which is similar to a two-dimensional slot. The holes are spaced 3d apart in the spanwise direction and 4d apart in the streamwise direction with a staggered arrangement. Temperature fields are acquired using a three-axis traversing system equipped with a thermocouple rake. A thermochromic liquid crystals technique is applied to determine adiabatic film cooling effectiveness values and heat transfer coefficients on the test surface. The results show that the rectangular-shaped holes provide better performance than the cylindrical holes because the penetration of coolant is reduced and the lateral spreading of coolant is promoted. For rows of film cooling holes, the film cooling performance decreases with increasing blowing rate. However, the difference of hole shapes and blowing rates for film cooling performance is reduced with increasing the row of cooling holes.