Film cooling technology is of great significance to enhance the performance of aero-engines and extend service life. With the increasing requirements for film cooling efficiency, researchers and engineers have carried out a lot of work on the precision and digital measurement of cooling holes. Based on the above, this paper outlines the importance and principles of film cooling technology and reviews the evolution of cooling holes. Also, this paper details the traditional measurement methods of the cooling hole used in current engineering scenarios with their limitations and categorizes digital measurement methods into five main types, including probing measurement technology, optical measurement technology, infrared imaging technology, computer tomography (CT) scanning technology, and composite measurement technology. The five types of methods and integrated automated measurement platforms are also analyzed. Finally, through a generalize and analysis of cooling hole measurement methods, this paper points out technical challenges and future trends, providing a reference and guidance for forward researches.

Film cooling as applied to rocket nozzles is analyzed numerically with emphasis on the assessment of the effect of the mixing of coolant with the hot stream. Cooling performance, as characterized by cooling effectiveness, is studied for three different coolants in the three-dimensional, turbulent flow field of a supersonic convergent-divergent nozzle operating with a hot stream temperature of 2500 K over a range of blowing ratios. The coolant stream is injected tangentially into the mainstream using a diffuser-type injector. Parameters influencing the effectiveness, such as coolant injector configuration and mixing layer, are analyzed. Thermal and species mixing between the coolant and the mainstream are investigated with regard to their impact on cooling effectiveness. The results obtained provide insight into the film cooling performance of the gases and the heat transfer characteristics associated with these three gases. An injector taper angle of 30° results in the most effective cooling among the configurations considered (0°, 15°, 30° and 45°). Mixing of the coolant with the hot stream is examined based on the distributions of velocity, temperature and species. The higher values of cooling effectiveness for Helium are attributed to its thermophysical properties and the reduced rate of mixing with the hot stream. The results further indicate that through optimization of the blowing ratio and the coolant injector configuration, the film cooling effectiveness can be substantially improved.

Film cooling is a major cooling technique used in modern gas turbines and air engines. The geometry of film-cooling holes is the fundamental aspect affecting the cooling performance. In this paper, a new cooling configuration called the double-expansion film-cooling hole has been put forward, which yields better performance than the widely used shaped holes and is easy to manufacture. The double-expansion holes at inclination angles of α=30∘, 45∘, and 60∘ are optimized using the genetic algorithm and the Kriging surrogate model, which is trained by CFD data randomly sampled using the Latin hypercube method. The numerically optimized double-expansion holes at different inclination angles were experimentally evaluated and compared with the optimized single-expansion laid-back fan-shaped holes, and the optimized double-expansion hole at α=30∘ was manually modified based on experiment results. Compared with the optimal single-expansion holes, the area-averaged cooling effectiveness of the double-expansion holes was increased by 34.5% at α=30∘, by 27.8% at α=45∘, and basically the same at α=60∘, showing the benefit of the double-expansion concept. The loss mechanism of film cooling was also analyzed in the perspective of the entropy generation rate, showing the optimal double-expansion holes have 21% less loss compared to a baseline narrow single-expansion hole. It was also found that CFD sometimes predicts a different trend from the experiment in optimization, and the experimental validation is necessary.

Particle deposition on film cooling surface is an engineering issue that degrades the thermal protection of turbine blade. Here, we present a combined experimental and numerical investigation on the particle deposition in the vicinity of multiple film cooling holes to reveal the effect of interactions between cooling outflows on particle deposition. The numerical simulation of film cooling with a group of three rows of straight film cooling holes is conducted and validated by experimental data with blowing ratios ranging from 0 to 0.08. Wax particles with size range from 5 to 40 μm are added in the heated mainstream to simulate the particle deposition in the experiment. The simulation results show the decrease of particle deposition with blowing ratio and various deposition characteristics in different regions of the surface. The flow fields from numerical results are analyzed in detail to illustrate deposition mechanism of the particles in different regions under the interactions of cooling outflows. The cooling air from the holes in the first row reduces the particle concentration near the wall but causes particle deposition in or between the tail regions by the generated flow disturbance. The cooling air from the latter hole separates the diluted flow in the upstream from the wall, and creates a tail region without particle deposition. This revealed particle deposition characteristics under the effect of outflows interaction can benefit the understanding of particle deposition in engineering applications, where multi-row of cooling holes are utilized.

The interaction between the film-cooling jet and vortex structures in the turbine passage plays an important role in the endwall cooling design. In this study, a simplified topology of a blunt body with a half-cylinder is introduced to simulate the formation of the leading-edge horseshoe vortex, where similarity compared with that in the turbine cascade is satisfied. The shaped cooling hole is located in the passage. With this specially designed model, the interaction mechanism between the cooling jet and the passage vortex can therefore be separated from the crossflow and the pressure gradient, which also affect the cooling jet. The loss-analysis method based on the entropy generation rate is introduced, which locates where losses of the cooling capacity occur and reveals the underlying mechanism during the mixing process. Results show that the cooling performance is sensitive to the hole location. The injection/passage vortex interaction can help enhance the coolant lateral coverage, thus improving the cooling performance when the hole is located at the downwash region. The coolant is able to conserve its structure in that, during the interaction process, the kidney vortex with the positive rotating direction can survive with the negative-rotating passage vortex, and the mixture is suppressed. However, the larger-scale passage vortex eats the negative leg of the kidney vortices when the cooling hole is at the upwash region. As a result, the coolant is fully entrained into the main flow. Changes in the blowing ratio alter the overall cooling effectiveness but have a negligible effect on the interaction mechanism. The optimum blowing ratio increases when the hole is located at the downwash region.

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) results are often presented in a deterministic way despite the uncertainties related to boundary conditions, numerical modelling, and discretization error. Uncertainty quantification is the field studying how these phenomena affect the numerical result. With these methods, the results obtained are directly comparable with the experimental ones, for which the uncertainty related to the measurement is always shown. This work presents an uncertainty quantification approach applied to CFD: the test case consists of an industrial prismatic gas turbine vane with standard film cooling shaped holes system on the suction side only. The vane was subject of a previous experimental test campaign which had the objective to evaluate the film cooling effectiveness through pressure-sensitive paint technique. CFD analyses are conducted coherently with the experiments: the analogy between heat and mass transfer is adopted to draw out the adiabatic film effectiveness, solving an additional transport equation to track the concentration of CO2 used as a coolant fluid. Both steady and unsteady simulations are carried out: the first one using a RANS approach with k-ω SST turbulence model the latter using a hybrid LES-RANS approach. Regarding uncertainty quantification, three geometrical input parameters are chosen: the hole dimension, the streamwise inclination angle of the holes, and the inlet fillet radius of the holes. Polynomial-chaos approach in conjunction with the probabilistic collocation method is used for the analysis: a first-order polynomial approximation was adopted which required eight evaluations only. RANS approach is used for the uncertainty quantification analysis in order to reduce the computational cost. Results show the confidence interval for the analysis as well as the probabilistic output. Moreover, a sensitivity analysis through Sobol\'s indices was carried out which prove how these input parameters contribute to the film cooling effectiveness, in particular, when dealing with the additive manufacturing process.

To meet the economic requirements of power output, the increased inlet temperature of modern gas turbines is above the melting point of the material. Therefore, high-efficient cooling technology is needed to protect the blades from the hot mainstream. In this study, film cooling was investigated in a simplified channel. A bulge located upstream of the film hole was numerically investigated by analysis of the film cooling effectiveness distribution downstream of the wall. The flow distribution in the plate channel is first presented. Comparing with a case without bulge, different cases with bulge heights of 0.1d, 0.3d and 0.5d were examined with blowing ratios of 0.5 and 1.0. Cases with 1% mist injection were also included in order to obtain better cooling performance. Results show that the bulge configuration located upstream the film hole makes the cooling film more uniform, and enhanceslateral cooling effectiveness. Unlike other cases, the configuration with a 0.3d-height bulge shows a good balance in improving the downstream and lateral cooling effectiveness. Compared with the case without mist at M = 0.5, the 0.3d-height bulge with 1% mist injection increases lateral average effectiveness by 559% at x/d = 55. In addition, a reduction of the thermal stress concentration can be obtained by increasing the height of the bulge configuration.