Effect of channel orientation on heat transfer in a rotating impingement cooling channel

The jet impingement cooling technology is usually applied in the turbine blade leading edge which suffers high thermal loads. In a high-speed rotating turbine blade, however, the channel orientation (β, the angle between the direction of the jet and the rotating plane) could alter the jets and heat transfer. Therefore, the effects of channel orientation (from 90^∘ to 180^∘) on heat transfer of confined jet impingement cooling are experimentally studied under an iso-thermal boundary. Both the jet-to-target surface distance and the jet-to-jet spacing are 3 times of the jet diameter. The jet Reynolds number varies from 5000 to 15,000, and the maximum jet rotation number reaches 0.24. The results show that the rotational effect on heat transfer is different in each channel orientation. In the cases of 90^∘ ≤ β ≤ 135^∘, a large vortex generated by the Coriolis force in the supply channel significantly changes the mass-flowrate distribution in each jet orifice. Hence, the heat transfer in the middle part decreases with the rotation number whereas the heat transfer at both ends increases, resulting in a “U-shape” pattern of heat transfer in the impingement channel. In the cases of 135^∘ < β ≤ 180^∘, however, the heat transfer throughout the stagnation zone decreases with the rotation number. The rotation-induced jet diversion is the primary factor that weakens the heat transfer, and jets are driven away from the target surface at high rotation numbers. Moreover, the heat transfer correlation on the stagnant zone is developed, which considers the effects of channel orientation and rotation number.