Gas Turbine Engines: Turbine Cooling
Ronald S. Bunker
Energy and Propulsion Technologies, General Electric Global Research Center, Niskayuna, NY, USA
1 Introduction
2 Turbine Design with Cooling
3 Elements of Turbine Cooling
4 The External Hot Gas Flow Driving Turbine
Cooling
5 Film Cooling
6 Turbine Airfoil Internal Cooling
7 The Impact of the Combustion System on Turbine
Cooling
8 In the Final Design
References
1 INTRODUCTION
The gas turbine is a specialized engine designed to convert
chemical energy into one or more useful forms of energy,
such as thrust, shaft work, and process heat. Gas turbine
engines for aviation and marine propulsion applications are
most commonly in the form of continuously rotating axial
turbomachinery (see Gas Turbine Engines: Turbines). As a
thermodynamic Brayton cycle, the efficiency of the gas tur-
bine engine can be raised substantially by increasing the firing
temperature of the turbine. Modern gas turbine systems are
fired at temperatures far in excess of the material melting
temperature limits. This is made possible by the aggressive
cooling of the hot gas path (HGP) components, the use of
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advanced materials for structural components and protective
1 coatings, the application of high efficiency aerodynamics, the
2 use of prognostic and health monitoring systems, and the con-
4 tinuous development of improved mechanical stress, lifing,
and systems interactions and behavioral modeling.
The high-pressure turbine (HPT) section of the engine,
4
shown in Figure 1 for the CFM56-5B commercial aviation en-
5 gine, encompasses all of these challenges simultaneously. For
7 example, the technology of cooling gas turbine components
via internal convective flows of single-phase gases spans the
10 range from simple smooth cooling passages to very complex
10 geometries involving many differing surfaces, architectures,
11 and fluid-surface interactions. The fundamental aim of this
technology area is to obtain the highest overall cooling ef-
fectiveness with the lowest possible penalty on the thermo-
dynamic cycle performance. The use of 20 to 30% of the
compressor air to cool the HPT presents a severe penalty on
the thermodynamic efficiency unless the firing temperature
is sufficiently high for the gains to outweigh the losses. In
all properly operating cooled turbine systems, the efficiency
gain is significant enough to justify the added complexity
and cost of the cooling technologies employed. In many re-
spects, gas turbine internal cooling technologies are founded
on heat exchanger and fluid processing techniques, “simply”
packaged into the constrained designs required of turbine air-
foils; that is, aerodynamics, mechanical strength, vibrational
response, etc. Turbine airfoils are after all merely highly spe-
cialized and complex heat exchangers that release the cold
side fluid in a controlled fashion to maximize work extrac-
tion. Actively or passively cooled regions of the HGP include
the stationary vanes and rotating blades of the HPT stages, the
shrouds bounding the rotating blades, and the combustor lin-
ers and flame holding segments. The ever present constraints
common to all components and systems include but are not
 2 Airbreathing Engines
Figure 1. Schematic of CFM56 commercial engine combustor and HPT.
limited to pressure losses, material temperatures, component
stresses, geometry and volume, aerodynamics, fouling, and
coolant conditions.
2 TURBINE DESIGN WITH COOLING
An overview of the HPT design system or design cycle typ-
ical of highly cooled airfoils is presented in Figure 2. The
design cycle analysis deals mainly with the mission require-
ments, such as efficiency, specific fuel consumption, thrust,
and meantime between repairs. The cycle sets the target
goals on the cooling system, including the coolant consump-
tion, turbine airfoil life, and inspection intervals. The pre-
liminary design of the cooled components is largely based
on nominal target conditions and divorced from the sur-
rounding systems constraints and competing requirements
or trade-offs. Such analysis can be performed based on one-,
two-, or three-dimensional complexities and details, and is
primarily used to compare various options in design (see Fun-
damentals of Heat Transfer and Thermal Physics, Engineer-
ing Analysis of Heat Transfer). Analysis must still be detailed
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DOI: 10.1002/9780470686652.eae093
enough, however, to allow ranking and down-selection be-
tween options. The result of preliminary design analysis, after
various alterations and iterations, is the basic system design
with balanced choices that satisfy the engine design goals. A
view of the detailed design process, specific to the cooling
design, leading to the final component specifications is shown
in Figure 3. Here the principle design factors affecting heat
transfer and cooling of HPT airfoils are linked to the cool-
ing design analysis through required boundary conditions.
Also shown are the major turbine design elements that are
linked to the cooling design and therefore directly impacted.
Cooling design analysis must include surrounding effects and
constraints from aerodynamics, material properties, mechan-
ical loads, lifing limitations, clearances, etc. Analyses often
must be combined thermal-mechanical predictions using very
detailed finite element models, at times even sub-models of
certain component sections (see Lifing Approaches and Com-
ponent Classification: Overview of Methods). Most analyses
are performed at one steady-state operating condition, for ex-
ample, hot day takeoff with full load, but more detailed anal-
ysis brings in the operational transient aspects to determine
if requirements or constraints are violated under conditions
 Gas Turbine Engines: Turbine Cooling 3

Figure 2. HPT design cycle.

Figure 3. Detailed cooling design process.

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 4 Airbreathing Engines

such as normal spool-up, fast start-up, takeoff, thrust-reverse,

and power cuts. In all cases, engine experience design factors
and known engine degradation factors must also be included.
As examples, such factors may include the use of –3σ material
properties, knockdown factors on cooling augmentation, and
loss of protective coatings. Every aspect of this design process
from the initial engine cycle objectives to the life of the final
component is also affected by the manufacturing methods by
the fact that process variability (statistical mean and standard
deviation) must be “designed into” the final component to
assure survival and guarantee lifetime economics.

3 ELEMENTS OF TURBINE COOLING

Cooling technology, as applied to gas turbine components

such as the high-pressure turbine vanes and blades, is com-
posed of five main elements that must work in harmony, (1)
internal convective cooling, (2) external surface film cool-
ing, (3) materials selection, (4) thermal-mechanical design,
and (5) selection and/or pre-treatment of the coolant fluid.
Internal convective cooling is the art of directing coolant via
the available pressure gradients into all regions of the com-
ponent requiring cooling, while augmenting the heat transfer
coefficients as necessary to obtain distributed and reasonably
uniform thermal conditions. Film cooling is the practice of
bleeding internal cooling flows onto the exterior skin of the
components to provide a heat flux reducing cooling layer.
Materials most commonly employed in cooled parts include
high-temperature, high-strength nickel- or cobalt-based su-
peralloys coated with yttria-stabilized zirconia oxide ceram-
ics (thermal barrier coating, TBC). The protective ceramic
coatings are today actively used to enhance the cooling capa-
bility of the internal convection mechanisms (see Thermal
Barrier Coatings). The thermal-mechanical design of the
components must marry these first three elements into a pack-
age that has acceptable thermal stresses, coating strains, oxi-
dation limits, creep-rupture properties, and aero-mechanical
response. The last cooling design element concerns the cor-
rect selection of the cooling fluid to perform the required
function with the least impact on the cycle efficiency. This
usually is achieved through the use of compressor air bleed
from the most advantageous stage of the compressor, but
might also be done using off-board cooling sources such as
closed-circuit steam or air, as well as intra-cycle and inter-
cycle heat exchangers.
A generic cooling technology performance chart is shown
in Figure 4 for a turbine airfoil, either a vane or a blade. The
technology curves shown on this chart present the gross air-
foil cooling effectiveness versus a heat loading parameter,
and indicate how the general elements used in cooling have
enhanced capabilities over time. The heat loading parameter
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Figure 4. Generic cooling technology curves.
ratios the overall hot gas heat flux (source) delivered to the
component against the overall coolant capability to accept
heat flux (sink). Since the gas and coolant temperatures are
not in this term, the ratio is not unity, but does provide a rela-
tive scale for placement of past and current designs. Several
curves are present showing major levels of cooling technol-
ogy. Aside from constraints such as cost, the goal of cooling
technology is always to move the next generation of design
in the direction shown by the dashed line, meaning greater
cooling effectiveness with less coolant flow. Temperatures
may be altered by various choices of cycles, surface areas
by overall thrust requirements or aerodynamics, coolant spe-
cific heat by selection of cooling fluid, airfoil temperatures
by cooling mass flow rate, and so forth. All of which lead
to differing impacts on overall engine efficiency, emissions,
life, and cost.
4 THE EXTERNAL HOT GAS FLOW
DRIVING TURBINE COOLING
An understanding of the sources and complexity of the
external heat loading factors that lead to the multi-faceted
approach to turbine cooling is useful as a starting point.
Using the HPT inlet guide vane, Figure 5 shows the gen-
eral elements of the flow field bounded by the airfoil and
endwalls, and through the hot gas passage. This flow field is
also largely applicable to the rotating blades with the same
features seen in the relative velocity frame, excepting de-
tails associated with the blade tips. The physical presence
of the airfoil-endwall junction leads to the creation of sig-
nificant secondary flows such as the leading edge horseshoe
vortex. The airfoil lift design in conjunction with the endwall
leads to the creation of cross-passage secondary flows. The
 Gas Turbine Engines: Turbine Cooling 5

Figure 5. External flow field complexities on a turbine inlet guide vane.

core flow region of the passage experiences the full range

of conditions from stagnation flow to highly accelerated and
turbulent boundary layer flow along the airfoil (see Laminar
Boundary Layers, Flow Instabilities and Transition, Turbu-
lent Boundary Layers). While the individual film holes are
not shown with coolant flow arrows, consider that each hole
is injecting coolant, but that the large range of external hot gas
pressures (Mach numbers) will lead to an equally large range
of film cooling blowing or momentum ratios. Also shown
are flow arrows representing various leakage flows (see Gas
Turbine Engines: Seals). For a specific aerodynamic design
(static pressure distributions) and the gas temperatures sur-
rounding the airfoil and endwalls, the external heat transfer
coefficient distribution is fundamentally that of a turbulent
boundary layer, but with the several additional influencing
factors including:
r airfoil loading;
r subsonic boundary layer laminar and turlulent transitions;
r bypass transition;
r transonic shocks;
r surface roughness distribution;
r freestream turbulence;
r freestream approach swirl;
r Thot gas recovery − Tadiabatic wall
rotational effects;
r boundary layer disturbances due to film coolant injec-
tions;
r boundary layer disturbances due to coating spallations;
r periodic unsteadiness and wake passing;
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r secondary flow injections in hub and tip regions;
r radiative heat flux distributions.
These major flow elements and their many spin-offs gener-
ally serve to augment the heat loading, and provide challenges
for film cooling on both the endwalls and the airfoil sections.
5 FILM COOLING
Film cooling is one of the major technologies allowing to-
day’s gas turbines to obtain extremely high turbine firing tem-
peratures, subsequent high efficiencies, and longer life parts.
The art and science of film cooling concerns the bleeding of
internal component cooling air through the external walls to
form a protective layer of cooling between the hot gases and
the component external surfaces. The application of effective
film cooling techniques provides the first and the best line
of defense for hot gas path surfaces against the onslaught
of extreme heat fluxes, serving to directly reduce the inci-
dent convective heat flux on the surface. Figure 6 provides a
visualization of discrete hole film injection showing the three-
dimensional mixing of coolant and hot gas. The measure of
unmixedness, or film cooling effectiveness is defined as
η= (1)
Thot gas recovery − Tcoolant
The adiabatic wall temperature is the effective mixed local
fluid temperature established in the absence of a wall heat
flux. Because of its high importance and widespread applica-
 6 Airbreathing Engines
tion, research into the many aspects of film cooling has seen
a tremendous increase over the past three decades. Film cool-
ing effectiveness depends on the major effects of film hole
internal fluid dynamics, interactions with the mainstream gas
flow, turbulence and vorticity production, effects of approach
flows prior to the hole entry, hole shaping, orientation, and
spacing, hole length-to-diameter ratio, density ratio, blowing
strength, momentum flux ratio, effects of mainstream tur-
bulence intensity, mainstream acceleration, external surface
curvature, and external surface roughness. One of the goals
of film cooling in gas turbines has been the achievement of
ideal cooling films, such as those from two-dimensional con-
tinuous slots with uniformly distributed cooling supply. Due
to the many competing constraints of turbine design (e.g.,
aerodynamics, thermal and mechanical stress, fabrication),
it is generally impractical to place such slots into the high
temperature surfaces of the turbine components. As a conse-
quence, film cooling is performed almost exclusively through
the use of discrete holes and rows of evenly spaced holes.
In practical applications, both commercial and military, all
film cooling holes are either round or shaped. Shaped holes
are composed of round metering or throat sections with a
uniform and symmetric expanded exit region on the hot gas
surface. Most commonly, all shaped holes applied in prac-
tice have fan diffuser exits with divergence angles between
10 and 15 degrees on each lateral side, and sometimes also
on the side into the surface. The lower flow visualization in
Figure 6 shows the higher degree of film cooling effective-
ness indicative of shaped holes. In all of its uses, film cooling
is notoriously sensitive to local flow fields and disturbances.
Figure 6. Mixing of film injection jets with hot gas flows.
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Film cooling elements that require specific attention and de-
sign include:
r stagnation region film cooling with radially oriented
holes, closely grouped in rows;
r film injection into low Mach number mainstream flows
with laminar or transitional boundary layers;
r film injection into a turbulent boundary layer with desta-
bilizing concave surface flows tending to greater film jet
mixing;
r film injection along a highly curved (convex) surface with
stabilizing effects, and possible relaminarization;
r film injection into a turbulent boundary layer with sepa-
ration and/or shocks;
r airfoil trailing edge cooling with film ejection from pres-
sure side bleed slots (as shown in Figures 5 and 7);
r carryover film cooling from the upstream combustor liner
walls (see Figure 1);
r endwall inter-segment leakage flows that may disrupt car-
ryover film cooling, or may add to film cooling dependent
on design and leakage strength;
r endwall film cooling migration due to secondary flow
effects (pressure gradient driven);
r endwall film cooling degradation due to vortex scrubbing
effects;
r local directional injection differences caused by manufac-
turing constraints;
r airfoil-endwall horseshoe rollup vortex effect interaction
with local film injections.

The rotating blade airfoils experience pretty much the
same conditions, although special attention must be given
to the tip film cooling. The vane-to-blade inner flow path
transition also contains a purge flow that has a swirl factor,
which interacts with whatever mixed flow is coming from
the vane endwall to the blade platform (see Internal Air and
Lubrication Systems).
Fundamental equations and correlations concerning vari-
ous cases of idealized slot film cooling, such as might be en-
countered in various leakage flow paths, are summarized in
the review of Goldstein (1971). The best open source of both
adiabatic film effectiveness and heat transfer coefficient aug-
mentation factors due to film injection for round and shaped
holes is contained in the series of studies by Gritsch, Schulz
and Wittig (1998a); Gritsch, Schulz and Wittig (1998c);
Saumweber, Schulz and Wittig (2003); Dittmar, Schulz and
Wittig (2003). Such data are generally put into a simplified
form to describe the centerline or laterally averaged adia-
batic effectiveness as a function of distance and mass veloc-
ity ratio. A broad set of data for discharge coefficients of
film cooling holes is available from the research of Hay and
Lampard (1998); Gritsch, Schulz and Wittig (1997b); Gritsch
et al. (2000). Aerodynamic film injection mixing losses may
be estimated by the use of the method of Hartsel (1972).
Figure 7. Typical cooled turbine blade: (a) internal flow circuits; and (b) actual blade.
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DOI: 10.1002/9780470686652.eae093
Gas Turbine Engines: Turbine Cooling 7
A summary of the complex loading and film cooling region
associated with the blade tip is provided by Bunker (2006).
A recent comprehensive compilation of the art and science of
film cooling is contained in the von Karman Institute lecture
series of Bunker et al. (2007).
6 TURBINE AIRFOIL INTERNAL
COOLING
In the turbine airfoil design community and amongst the var-
ious manufacturers there are a very large number of cooled
airfoil designs and an even larger number of individual
cooling features. Figure 7a depicts a typical turbine blade
having three distinct internal cooling circuits, similar to the
actual blade shown in Figure 7b. The airfoil forward region
is cooled by a radial passage that delivers impingement air to
the leading edge through crossover holes, while the lead edge
discharges showerhead film cooling. The airfoil mid-chord
region is cooled by a five-pass serpentine with turbulated
channels and 180◦ turns. The airfoil trailing edge region uti-
lizes a radial passage with pin bank that feeds a distribution
of small axial flow channels ending in bleed slots. The blade
tip section has passage dust holes and dedicated coolant holes
 8 Airbreathing Engines
exiting into a tip cavity. In addition, rows of film holes other
than the showerhead may be located to draw from any or all of
the passages to refresh the external surface film cooling. The
typical cooled blade wall section is simply composed of an
investment cast nickel or cobalt alloy base metal, a metallic
bond coat, and a layer of TBC. The base metal structural de-
sign, thickness, and crystallographic orientation (equiaxed,
directionally solidified, or single crystal) are an integral part
of the overall thermal-mechanical design. An increase in
base metal temperature capability serves to directly reduce
cooling requirements, but usually also significantly increases
cost. The base metal thickness provided as a product of the
investment casting process will have a nominal value of
about 1.5 mm, with limits set on the thermal stresses, low
cycle fatigue life, and creep rupture life. The bond coat is
only about 0.05 mm thick, and much of that may be diffused
into the base metal surface. The bond coat is present to
provide strain matching and bonding augmentation for the
TBC, as well as some oxidation resistance. The TBC layer
has come to be relied upon as a heat load mitigation technol-
ogy. With a nominal thickness of 0.25 mm, TBC thickness
variations can have a substantial effect on the external heat
flux and the resulting maximum base metal and bond coat
temperatures.
Typical internal cooling technologies include turbula-
tors, pin-fins, turns, impingement jets, trailing edge holes,
swirl cooling, vortex cooling, and convoluted passages (see
Heat Transfer Enhancement: Phase Change, Geometry, and
Jets/Sprays). Several characteristics of gas turbine cooling
are worthy of note prior to describing any specific technolo-
gies. Almost all highly cooled regions of the high-pressure
turbine components involve the use of turbulent convective
flows and heat transfer. Very few if any cooling flows within
the primary hot section are laminar or transitional. More-
over, the typical range of Reynolds numbers for cooling tech-
Figure 8. Cooling techniques of (a) turbulated channels, (b) impingement, and (c) pin fins.
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niques, using traditional characteristic lengths and velocities,
is from 10 000 to 60 000. This is true of both stationary and
rotating components. The enhancement of heat transfer co-
efficients for turbine cooling makes full use of the turbulent
flow nature by seeking to generate mixing mechanisms in
the coolant flows that actively exchange cooler fluid for the
heated fluid near the walls. These mechanisms include shear
layers, boundary layer disruption, and vortex generation. In a
marked difference from conventional heat exchangers, most
turbine cooling means do not rely on an increase in cooling
surface area, since the available surface area to volume ra-
tios are very small. Surface area increases are beneficial, but
are not the primary objective of enhancements. The use of
various enhancement techniques typically results in at least
50% and as much as 300% increase in local heat transfer co-
efficients over that associated with fully developed turbulent
flow in a smooth duct.
One of the most common means for enhancing heat trans-
fer coefficients within internal cooling passages, and espe-
cially the serpentine passages of many turbine blade designs,
is the use of turbulators, also known as rib rougheners (see
Figure 8a). Turbulators in the form of trip strips placed trans-
verse to the bulk flow direction within a channel were one
of the first improvements made to the cooling of blades, and
hence many investigations have been made into the heat trans-
fer and friction characteristics. With the advancements in ma-
terials and manufacturing technologies of the last decade, a
drastically larger realm of surface enhancement techniques
has become cost-effective for use in the cooling of turbine air-
foils. Turbulators may now be of varying shape, orientation,
segmentation, and size, essentially providing a continuous
spectrum of possible geometries for achieving flow-surface
interactions serving to enhance local and global heat trans-
fer coefficients. The bulk of turbulator usage is for relative
height less than 0.2 (turbulator height relative to channel

hydraulic diameter), but greater than that relative rough-
ness typically associated with uniform surface roughness.
In general, surface-averaged heat transfer coefficients within
stationary, turbulated passages may be enhanced by factors
from 1.8 to 2.8, while the friction factors or required pumping
power are increased by factors of 3 to 10. Many parameters
are involved in turbulated passages (angle to the bulk flow,
pitch-to-height ratio, relative height, shaping, taper, etc.), and
many more in serpentine circuits, but the range of effects re-
mains much the same. Amongst the most promising geome-
tries are variations on chevron turbulators, including broken
or segmented chevrons, as well as the staggering of these
features to increase vortical surface flow interactions.
Turbulated cooling passages are of particular usefulness in
the rotating turbine blades where simplicity of airfoil struc-
ture is required to maintain acceptable stress levels. The ex-
ceedingly high rotational field, on the order of tens of thou-
sands of g’s, introduces centrifugal and Coriolis forces, as
well buoyancy effects, on the cooling fluid. The interaction
of these forces with the forced convection of the cooling fluid
leads to greatly enhanced or greatly reduced heat transfer co-
efficients on internal surfaces of radially oriented channels
(such as shown in Figure 7). Enhancement magnitudes can
be as large as a factor of 2 over the already turbulated heat
transfer level, while reductions can be a factor of 0.5. Fur-
ther localized complications arise from the thermally induced
buoyancy effects that can actually reverse flow along entire
sections of a surface. Such challenges lead to the require-
ment that each new blade cooling design be firmly grounded
within known cooling parameter space, or that deviations be
carefully tested and validated.
The use of impingement jets for the cooling of various
regions of modern gas turbine engines is widespread, most
especially within the high-pressure turbine. Since the cooling
effectiveness of impingement jets is very high, this method
of cooling provides an efficient means of component heat
load management given sufficient available pressure head and
geometrical space for implementation. Regular arrays of im-
pingement jets are used within turbine airfoils and endwalls
to provide relatively uniform and controlled cooling of fairly
open internal surface regions (see Figure 8b). Such regular
impingement arrays are generally directed against the target
surfaces by the use of sheet metal baffle plates, inserts, or
covers that are fixed in position relative to the target surface.
These arrangements allow for the design of a wide range of
impingement geometries, including in-line, staggered, or ar-
bitrary patterns of jets. In more confined regions of airfoils
such as the leading edge or trailing edge, spanwise lines of
impingement jets are sometimes used to focus cooling on
one primary location of high external heat load like the air-
foil aerodynamic stagnation region. There also exist many
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Gas Turbine Engines: Turbine Cooling 9
other applications for individual impingement jets on selected
stationary and rotating surfaces. Vane endwalls, blade plat-
forms, unattached shrouds, and combustor liners all have spe-
cific local cooling requirements well suited to the use of in-
dividual jet cooling. Impingement jets are also used on rotor
disk cavity faces and in some applications provide additional
functions of sealing.
Pin banks or pin fins are commonly used in the confined
regions of blade trailing edges. Most research has focused
on pins with height-to-diameter ratios of one or higher, in
regular arrays of in-line or staggered rows of pins. Common
applications center around a pin-to-pin spacing of about 2.5.
The pins, generally of circular cross section as shown in Fig-
ure 8c, each generate flow separation and wake regions that
serve to turbulate the flow. This flow disruption decays with
distance, hence the use of multiple rows of pin fins. Each pin
augments local heat transfer coefficients through flow mix-
ing, as well as the addition of a stagnation heat transfer region
on the pin itself. Heat transfer coefficient enhancement lev-
els are usually built up to a maximum of factor of about 3
after three to four rows of pin fins, and hold steady for any
additional rows. Staggered arrays usually provide higher heat
transfer capability.
Because there are so many possible combinations and vari-
ations, cooling design is founded on several basic generic cor-
relations from the open literature, and augmented by many
geometry-specific correlations determined by the original en-
gine manufacturers. The following is a list of the primary
cooling correlation sources from open literature. Impinge-
ment jet array heat transfer coefficients may be obtained from
the correlation of Florschuetz, Truman and Metzger (1981)
for average jet Reynolds numbers typical in engine design.
For square arrays of jets at somewhat lower Re numbers, the
graphical data of Kercher and Tabakoff (1970) may be used.
Impingement cooling that involves the use of individual jets,
or slot type jets, or other non-standard configurations, may be
determined by correlations in the summary paper of Martin
(1977). Most fully-developed, turbulated duct flow heat trans-
fer correlations are of the format Nu = C∗ Ren Pr m . The basic
correlations for stationary turbulated ducts with transverse or
angled rib rougheners can be found in Han, Park and Lei
(1985). This research also includes the coefficients of fric-
tion. Rotating passage heat transfer data with and without
turbulators is contained in the NASA HOST program data
sets of Hajek et al. (1991) and Johnson, Wagner and Steuber
(1993). Pin bank internal heat transfer and pressure loss cor-
relations are contained in the works by Metzger, Berry and
Bronson (1982) and Van Fossen (1982).
While the above referenced correlations provide a good
starting point for the most common methods of cooling, there
are dozens of special regions, geometries, and circumstances
 10 Airbreathing Engines
in cooling design analysis that require case-by-case data. For
these cases, the relevant literature is too large to mention here.
Most of these cases deal with the so-called “edge” regions
of the cooled components, including the endwalls, platforms,
airfoil leading and trailing edges, blade tips, interfacial rails,
fillets, and any isolated corners. There are also several other
emerging general forms of cooling, such as chevron turbula-
tors, surface arrays of concavities, swirl flow channels, mesh
networks, and arrays of small surface protrusions beginning
to find their way into designs. A summary of these cooling
techniques considered outside the mainstream of design can
be found in Bunker (2008).
7 THE IMPACT OF THE COMBUSTION
SYSTEM ON TURBINE COOLING
The turbine has a special relationship with the combustion
system (see Gas Turbine Engine Combustors). The turbine
cooling design may be directly influenced by the type of com-
bustor system, the combustor exit conditions, and the change
in combustor conditions at various cycle operating points.
The combustion system operation and its design relative to
the turbine has potential impact in at least six main respects,
(1) hot gas temperature profiles, (2) hot streak clocking rel-
ative to the turbine, (3) turbulence characteristics, (4) cool-
ing backflow margins, (5) emissions, and (6) fuel type. Each
different combustor system design has its own set of charac-
teristic radial gas temperature profiles. The “set” of profiles
refers to the fact that the full-power radial profile differs from
any part-power profile. The key for turbine cooling design is
to know as much as possible about the combustor system exit
conditions for all operating conditions, and to carry this infor-
mation through to the design for each cycle operating point.
Combustion systems have circumferential gas temperature
and pressure profiles as well, due to the discrete nature of vir-
tually all designs with respect to air/fuel injection and flame
holding. While radial profiles are caused by the combined
effects of fuel nozzles and combustor dilution/cooling flows,
circumferential profiles or pattern factors are caused primar-
ily by the number and spacing of the fuel nozzles. Since the
turbine inlet vanes are also of a finite number, this leads to the
interesting aspect of hot streak clocking. The combustor hot
streak may be aligned directly on a vane leading edge, mid-
way between two vanes, or may be variable around the entire
vane ring depending on the relative count of fuel nozzles and
turbine inlet vanes. Different unsteady gas conditions may
be incident upon the rotating blade row. Combustion system
turbulence and swirl flow are additional complicating factors
generated from the specific modes and methods of diffusion
Encyclopedia of Aerospace Engineering, Online © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
This article is © 2010 The General Electric Company
This article was published in the Encyclopedia of Aerospace Engineering in 2010 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/9780470686652.eae093
and premixed combustion. Swirl stabilization of combustion
is a very common approach employed to avoid blowout and
flashback, but results in a highly complex flow entering the
turbine. Emissions, and especially NOx, are directly affected
by the firing temperature, which in turn is heavily influenced
by the degree of turbine cooling. Reduced turbine cooling
is beneficial to reducing emissions. Aviation fuel types are
presently fairly limited in diversity, but future fuels derived
from alternate sources such as biomass stocks will modify the
combustor conditions further. These several issues concern-
ing the combustor-turbine system all point to the requirement
that the cooling design analysis not only must be performed
for changing conditions due to the combustor, but in some
cases will even lead to vane-to-vane differences in the cool-
ing design.
8 IN THE FINAL DESIGN
Design for transient operation is an absolute requirement to
meet the needs of performance and safety. The cooling design
of transients is commonly performed using a sufficient num-
ber of steady-state analyses and their associated boundary
conditions. Each steady-state design analysis is performed
considering the aspects discussed in the previous sections.
The boundary conditions of these several operating points,
flow rates, pressures, gas temperature profiles, heat transfer
coefficients, and film effectiveness, are used to form the an-
chor points of the transient analysis. Since the number of
steady-state analysis points is typically limited, the bound-
ary conditions at several intermediate steps must be obtained
by interpolation. As the basic fluid dynamic and thermal do-
mains of the hot gas and cooling flows also change with op-
erating conditions, these interpolations are performed using
explicit or ad-hoc rules. The exact nature and definition of
these rules are very dependent on the turbine design and op-
eration, and as such are specific to the original engine manu-
facturers. Transient analyses of individual components, such
as the turbine airfoils, follow the same general guidelines.
Usually, the concerns associated with these components are
not the same as those of the overall turbine systems. Instead,
issues with clearances, leakage gaps, binding, and hot gas in-
gestion are scrutinized. In addition, transient effects on peak
material stress and strain are important, as evidenced by the
potential for TBC spallation under severe thermal transients.
The transient cooling design analysis for hot gas path com-
ponents may therefore focus on certain transients, or portions
of transients, known to be of greatest concern.
Manufacturing technologies span the entire process of
fabrication from investment casting to the application of

protective coatings. Manufacturing processes include the ma-
chining of wax and core molds and dies, the ceramic core
formation, the casting of metal parts, the removal of slag
residue from the casting, external machining (e.g., milling
or electro-discharge machining) for finished dimensions, in-
ternal machining of specific holes or channels, the drilling
of film holes (laser, electro-discharge, or water jet), the ap-
plication of internal and/or external protective coatings such
as bondcoat and ceramic thermal barrier coating (physical
vapor deposition, chemical vapor deposition), as well as var-
ious joining operations (brazing and welding). All of the HPT
and combustor components are the product of sophisticated
fabrication processes and are subject to manufacturing con-
straints and variations that affect the cooling of the parts.
Every aspect of this design process from the initial engine
cycle objectives to the life of the final component is af-
fected by the manufacturing methods by the fact that process
variability (statistical mean and standard deviation) must be
“designed into” the final component to assure survival and
guarantee lifetime economics.
Two additional considerations must be incorporated into
the cooling design analyses as indicated in Figure 3: (1) en-
gine experience design factors and (2) engine degradation
factors. These factors account for past experience in both
test engines and operational engines that cannot be explic-
itly obtained through research and design activities. These
adjustments account for the unknown, or at least poorly un-
derstood, conversions from laboratory data and predictions
to the reality of complex engine conditions. These factors are
also sometimes known as “lessons learned”. For the cooling
design, experience factors will include film effectiveness re-
alization or knockdown multipliers, film hole diameter reduc-
tions due to protective coating applications, minimum allow-
able hole spacings to avoid hole-to-hole cracking, reduction
of internal heat transfer coefficients due to debris collection,
typical TBC spallation sizes (if any), surface roughness dis-
tribution patterns, and any other generic or design-specific
experience gained. Example engine degradation factors will
include alterations to the hot gas temperature profiles or mag-
nitudes due to combustor system operation, blade tip erosion,
film hole blockages due to deposits, and even modified mate-
rial properties with exposure at elevated temperatures. These
additional factors are typically incorporated into the design
process by one of two methods. First, the data from engine
experience can be “data matched” to the design prediction to
arrive at the required adjustment factors to be used in the de-
sign correlations. Second, modifications due to degradation
can be carried through the design analysis in a statistical man-
ner to determine magnitudes of change, as well as sensitivity
coefficients.
Encyclopedia of Aerospace Engineering, Online © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
This article is © 2010 The General Electric Company
This article was published in the Encyclopedia of Aerospace Engineering in 2010 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/9780470686652.eae093
Gas Turbine Engines: Turbine Cooling 11
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Encyclopedia of Aerospace Engineering, Online © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
This article is © 2010 The General Electric Company
This article was published in the Encyclopedia of Aerospace Engineering in 2010 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/9780470686652.eae093