Numerical investigation of the flow field and heat transfer characteristics for upstream continuous and truncated ribs

To verify the applicability of upstream ribs in film cooling, the present numerical study examines heat transfer characteristics and flow field for ribs located upstream of the film hole. Five ribs including bilaterally truncated ribs, centrally truncated ribs, and continuous ribs are explored with the smooth case at two blowing ratios and fixed crossflow Reynolds number. The results show that the film cooling effectiveness of cases with ribs outperforms the case without rib at a low blowing ratio. Centrally truncated ribs and continuous ribs provide superior cooling effectiveness than bilaterally truncated ribs and smooth cases. The introduction of ribs makes the distribution of the heat transfer coefficient (HTC) uneven after the hole. Among these, centrally truncated ribs increased the HTC, while bilaterally truncated ribs reduce the HTC in the far hole area at a high blowing ratio. It is found that anti-kidney-shaped vortex pairs are generated between two adjacent jets for centrally truncated rib cases, while they are generated in front of the jets for bilaterally truncated rib cases. For continuous rib, the impingement of the mainstream gas on the jet leads to a reduction in strength of the kidney-shaped vortex, which allows the coolant to form a better coverage.