The effect of freestream turbulence on film cooling adiabatic effectiveness

The film-cooling performance of a flat plate in the presence of low and high freestream turbulence is investigated using liquid crystal thermography. This paper contributes high-resolution color images that clearly show how the freestream turbulence spreads the cooling air around a larger area of the film-cooled surface. Distributions of the adiabatic effectiveness are determined over the film-cooled surface of the flat plate using the hue method and image processing. Three blowing rates are investigated for a model with three straight holes spaced three diameters apart, with density ratio near unity. High freestream turbulence is shown to increase the area-averaged effectiveness at high blowing rates, but decrease it at low blowing rates. At low blowing ratio, freestream turbulence clearly reduces the coverage area of the cooling air due to increased mixing with the main flow. However, at high blowing ratio, when much of the jet has lifted off in the low turbulence case, high freestream turbulence turns its increased mixing into an asset, entraining some of the coolant that penetrates into the main flow and mixing it with the air near the surface.