Computational study of plasma actuator on film cooling performance for different shaped holes

An investigation on film cooling holes with plasma actuators are performed for circular hole, expansion-shaped hole and fan-shaped hole on the surface of flat plate. The results are compared with those obtained from the same combination of varied shaped holes without plasma actuator. Computational results suggest that plasma-induced body force mitigates the intensity of the counter rotating vortex pair by creating a new pair of vortexes, thereby providing greater coolant-surface attachment for each hole shape, resulting in the improvement of film cooling effectiveness. As for the holes of varied shapes with plasma actuator, the expansion-shaped hole shows superior laterally averaged film cooling effectiveness to that of the circular hole. Comparing with the abovementioned two shaped holes, the fan-shaped one performs worse in terms of laterally averaged film cooling effectiveness at low blow ratios, and better at high blow ratios. The fan-shaped hole also provides the best uniformity of film cooling effectiveness among all cases.