Conjugate Simulation of the Effects of Oxide Formation in Effusion Cooling Holes on Cooling Effectiveness

Within Collaborative Research Center 561 "Thermally Highly Loaded, Porous and Cooled Multi-Layer Systems for Combined Cycle Power Plants" at RWTH Aachen University an effusion-cooled multi-layer plate configuration with seven staggered effusion cooling holes is investigated numerically by application of a 3-D in-house fluid flow and heat transfer solver, CHTflow. The effusion-cooling is realized by finest drilled holes with a diameter of 0.2 mm that are shaped in the region of the thermal barrier coating. Oxidation studies within SFB 561 have shown that a corrosion layer of several oxides with a thickness of appoximately 20 mu m grows from the CMSX-4 substrate into the cooling hole. The goal of this work is to investigate the effect this has on the cooling effectiveness, which has to be quantified prior to application of this novel cooling technology in real gas turbines. In order to do this, the influence on the aerodynamics of the flow in the hole, on the hot gas flow and the cooling effectiveness on the surface and in the substrate layer are discussed. The adverse effects of corrosion on the mechanical strength are not a part of this study. A hot gas Mach-number of 0.25 and blowing ratios of approximately 0.28 and 0.48 are considered. The numerical grid contains the coolant supply (plenum), the solid body for the conjugate calculations and the main flow area on the plate. It is shown that the oxidation layer does significantly affect the flow field in the cooling holes and on the plate, but the cooling effectiveness differs only slightly from the reference case. This seems to justify modelling the holes without taking account of the oxidation.