Investigation of Turbine Blade Leading Edge Film Cooling: Application of Object Oriented Programming

The present study encompasses direct comparisons between the OpenFOAM (Open Source Field Operation and Manipulation) which is a C++ object oriented library for the Computational Continuum Mechanics, and the commercial CFD code, FLUENT, concerning results of turbulent flow application such as the film cooling of a turbine blade leading edge. This is carried out to validate the OpenFOAM capability as a CFD research tool by considering, namely, the effects of blowing ratios of 0.4, 0.8, and 1.2 on film cooling adiabatic effectiveness. Besides, three-dimensional modeling is preformed on all features of the turbulent regime such as velocity and temperature field employing the RANS models and the turbulence model used in the PimpleFOAM Solver of OpenFOAM is the SST / k −w model. The present computational domain is built up based on an available experimental set-up. A cylindrical leading edge with a flat after-body represents the model blade leading edge. Considering the inaccuracy of RANS turbulence modeling, results agree fairly well far from the leading edge. Also, an increase in the blowing ratio causes a decrease in the adiabatic effectiveness. In addition, the OpenFOAM(method A) outputs are in good agreement with the FLUENT(method B)results and also with the experimental data which confirms the Open FOAM potential as a reliable CFD research tool.

Keywords:

OpenFOAM , object oriented programming , blade film cooling , SST / k −w model