To improve the film cooling performance by shaped injection holes for the turbine blade leading edge region, we have investigated the flow characteristics of the turbine blade leading edge film cooling using five different cylindrical body models with various injection holes, which are a baseline cylindrical hole, two laidback (spanwise-diffused) holes, and two tear-drop shaped (spanwise- and streamwise-diffused) holes, respectively. Mainstream Reynolds number based on the cylinder diameter was 7.1 x 10(4) and the mainstream turbulence intensities were about 0.2%. The effect of injectant flow rates was studied for various blowing ratios of 0.7, 1.0, 1.3 and 1.7, respectively. The density ratio in the present study is nominally equal to one. Detailed temperature distributions of the cylindrical body surfaces are visualized by means of an infrared thermography (IRT). Results show that the conventional cylindrical holes have poor film cooling performance compared to the shaped holes. Particularly, it can be concluded that the laidback hole (Shape D) provides better film cooling performance than the other holes and the broader region of high effectiveness is formed with fairly uniform distribution. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.