Film cooling effects on the tip flow characteristics of a gas turbine blade

An experimental investigation of the tip flow characteristics between a gas turbine blade tip and the shroud was conducted by a pressure-test system and a particle image velocimetry (PIV) system. A three-times scaled profile of the GE-E3 blade with five film cooling holes was used as specimen. The effects on flow characteristics by the rim width and the groove depth of the squealer tip were revealed. The rim widths were (a) 0.9%, (b) 2.1%, and (c) 3.0% of the axial chord, and the groove depths were (a) 2.8%, (b) 4.8%, and (c) 10% of the blade span. Several pressure taps on the top plate above the blades were connected to pressure gauges. By a CCD camera the PIV system recorded the velocity field around the leading edge zone including the five cooling holes. The flow distributions both in the tip clearance and in the passage were revealed, and the influence of the inlet velocity was determined. In this work, the tip flow characteristics with and without film cooling were investigated. The effects of different global blowing ratios of M=0.5, 1.0, 1.3 and 2.5 were established. It was found that decreasing the rim width resulted in a lower mass flow rate of the leakage flow, and the pressure distributions from the leading edge to the trailing edge showed a linearly increasing trend. It was also found that if the inlet velocity was less than 1.5 m/s, the flow field in the passage far away from the suction side appeared as a stagnation zone.