Flow Through a Passage With Scaled Additive Manufacturing Roughness Representing Different Printing Orientations

Components with internal passages created using some laser-sintering based, additive manufacturing (AM) systems can exhibit anisotropic surface features with an appearance of three-dimensional roughness superimposed on two-dimensional, rib-like features. This paper presents an investigation of flow over roughness representing internal cooling passages printed at different angles to the AM printing plane. A roughness geometry was acquired using an X-ray tomography scan of a direct-metal-laser-sintering (DMLS) created coupon with internal cooling passages. The base surface scan was then used to create four surfaces with notional rib-like features positioned at different angles relative to the spanwise flow direction. The flow resistance of each surface was measured using the roughness internal flow tunnel. The mean flow velocity profiles for the cases with $ReDh$ ≤ 30,000 were characterized using a four-camera, tomographic, and particle tracking system. The results demonstrate roughness orientation effects include (1) reduced bulk flow resistance as the alignment angle from the spanwise direction increases, (2) generated flow in the spanwise direction and increased tunnel flow swirl as the alignment angle increases, and (3) velocity profile changes as the flow migrates away from the rough side of the tunnel to the opposing smooth wall. The particle tracking system also demonstrates that the mean streamwise flow profiles change significantly between the 30 deg and 45 deg roughness orientations. Finally, the equivalent sandgrain roughness measurements for the four surfaces were found to follow the trends predicted using the correlations of Bons (2002, “St and c_f Augmentation for Real Turbine Roughness With Elevated Freestream Turbulence,” ASME J. Turbomach., 124(4), pp. 632–644.) and Sigal and Danberg (1990, “New Correlation of Roughness Density Effect on the Turbulent Boundary Layer,” AIAA J., 28(3), pp. 554–556.).