Stress-Blended Eddy Simulation of Coherent Unsteadiness in Pressure Side Film Cooling Applied to a First Stage Turbine Vane

Within the framework of scale resolving simulation techniques, this paper considers the application of the stress-blended eddy simulation (SBES) model to pressure side (PS) film cooling in a high-pressure turbine nozzle guide vane. The cooling geometry exhibits two rows of film cooling holes and a trailing edge cutback, fed by the same plenum chamber. The blowing conditions investigated were in the range of coolant-to-mainstream mass flow ratio (MFR) from 1% to 2%. The flow regime resembles that in a real engine (exit isentropic Mach number of Ma2is = 0.6), but also low speed conditions (Ma2is = 0.2) were considered for comparison purposes. The predicted results were validated with measurements of surface adiabatic effectiveness and instantaneous off-wall visualizations of the flow field downstream of cooling holes and cutback slot. The focus is on SBES ability of developing shear layer structures, because of their strong influence on velocity field, entrainment mechanisms and, thus, vane surface temperature. Special attention has been paid to the development and dynamics of coherent unsteadiness, since measured values of shedding frequency were also available for validation. SBES provided significant improvement in capturing the unsteady physics of cooling jet-mainstream interaction. The effects of changes in flow regime and blowing conditions on vortex structures were well predicted along the cutback surface. As regards the cooling holes, the high speed condition made it difficult to match the experimental Kelvin–Helmholtz breakdown in the shear layer, in the case of high velocity jets.