Experimental and Numerical Investigation of Effusion Cooling Performance Over Combustor Liner Flat Plate Model

This article presents a study of cooling performance of combustor liner of a gas turbine, using a flat plate model. The combustion process in gas turbine engines liberates very high temperature gases, which impacts the properties of the combustor liner. Hence, cooling of liner is important and is carried out by effusion cooling method. Experiments are carried out over a flat plate with staggered effusion holes. The hot mainstream air flows at a Reynolds number of 2.325 × 105, which indicates a turbulent flow. The coolant to mainstream density ratios of 1.3 and 1.5 is maintained by varying the blowing ratios ranging from 0.5 to 2.5. Test plate surface temperature measurements are recorded by an infrared camera and the overall cooling effectiveness in the flow direction is calculated. Numerical validation for conjugate heat transfer analysis is performed using ANSYS workbench and the temperature contours obtained are compared with infrared camera images. MATLAB program is used to obtain the effectiveness contours for experimental and computational fluid dynamics results. The effectiveness contours are found to be similar, showing the increase in effectiveness with the increase in blowing ratios. Density ratios comparison shows that with the increase in density ratio, the overall cooling effectiveness marginally decreases