An experimental and numerical investigation of adiabatic film cooling effectiveness was conducted on four full-coverage inclined multihole walls with different hole arrangements. The hole geometrical patterns and the test conditions were chosen to be representative of film cooling designs for modern aeroengine combustor liners. The four hole arrangements were grouped into two types based on lateral hole pitch ( P ) and streamwise row spacing ( S ). One type included two test plates which had the same S and P (S/P = 2) and compound angle (β = 0 deg) but different hole inclination angles ( α ) (30 and 150 deg ). The other type included two test plates which had the same S and P (but S/P = 1) and inclination angle (α = 30 deg) but different compound angles (0 deg and 50 deg). Heat-mass transfer analogy method was employed to investigate the adiabatic film cooling effectiveness of these multihole walls with typical blowing ratios for aeroengine combustors. The numerical simulation was performed to characterize the flowfield and temperature distribution, aiming to further understand the film cooling mechanisms. The experimental results indicated that blowing ratio within the range from 1 to 4 had negligible influence on adiabatic film cooling effectiveness (η) in the case of concurrent coolant injection while hole arrangement had large effect on η. But the blowing ratio within the range from 1 to 4 had large effect on the film cooling effectiveness for the counterflow film cooling scheme. The numerical results were compared with experimental data and fairly good agreement was obtained. The numerical simulation revealed the flow structure, particularly exhibiting significant influence of the interaction between mainstream flow and coolant jets on η. With validation by experimental data, film cooling numerical simulation seems quite helpful in selecting optimum multihole arrangement for modern combustor liner design.Copyright © 2003 by ASME