Numerical and Experimental Investigation of the Inclination Angle Effect on the Cooling Effectiveness in a Liquid Fueled Can Type Combustor

Combustor liner cooling design has been more and more challenging due to increasing efficiency and output power of modern aircraft engines over the last decades. Therefore, not only improving the cooling performance but also investigating the cooling effectiveness accurately are difficult tasks for engineers. The main purposes of the present work are on one hand to propose a simple methodology of investigation of the metal temperature distribution for an effusion cooled combustor liner, and on the other hand to observe the effect of the inclination angle of effusion holes on cooling performance. An experimental setup based on a liquid fueled can type combustor with effusion cooled liner and a swirler was built to obtain realistic swirling and reacting flow conditions in atmospheric conditions. Two coupons with different effusion hole’s inclination angles of 25 and 35 degrees were used. In addition, one more test coupon with 25 degrees inclination holes was used with thermal paint coating to obtain the metal temperature distribution through its color change on the cold side. Each coupon was equipped with several thermocouples to measure the liner metal temperature and the inlet air temperature. RANS based Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis was performed for the can type combustor. Numerical results for metal temperatures were obtained with 1D and 3D thermal analysis. Heat flux values were deducted from the CFD analysis for the 3D thermal methodology. Thus, the pros and cons of each method were compared in the light of the numerical and experimental results. In addition, the effect of the inclination angle on the cooling effectiveness was investigated.