Experimental Study of Swirl Cooling Flow on a Circular Chamber Using 3-D Stereo-PIV

Experimental study of a swirl flow using 3-D Stereo-PIV (Particle Image Velocimetry) that models a gas turbine blade internal cooling configuration is presented. The work is intended to provide an understanding of the advancements of swirl cooling flow methodology utilizing 3-D Stereo-PIV. The study aims at determining the critical swirl number that has the potential to deliver the maximum heat transfer results. In the swirl cooling flow methodology, cooling air is routed to the turbine blades where it passes through the blade’s internal passages lowering the temperature. An experimental setup with seven discrete tangential jets at three different Reynolds numbers is designed to allow detail measurements of the flow. To provide the particles for velocity measurements an oil particle seeder (LAVision) is used. The circular chamber is made of clear acrylic to allow visualization of the flow phenomena. Data is post-processed in DaVis, velocity calculations are conducted in MATLAB, and TechPlot is used for data visualization. This investigation focuses on the continuous swirl flow that must be maintained via continuous injection of tangential flow, where swirl flow is generated with seven inlets and decays with downstream distance. It was also determined that the critical swirl number, Sn, depends greatly on the location and size of the tangential slots.