Effects of camberwise varying tip injection on loss and wake characteristics of a low pressure turbine blade

摘要

This paper presents the results of an experimental study that investigates the effects of camberwise varying tip injection on the total pressure loss and wake flow characteristics downstream of a row of Low Pressure Turbine (LPT) blades. This injection technique involves spanwise jets at the tip that are issued from a series of holes distributed along the camber line. The injection from each hole is individually and separately controlled using a computer driven solenoid valve and therefore the flow injection geometrical pattern at the tip can be adjusted to any desired variation. Three different injection cases are investigated including triangular, reversed triangular and uniform injection patterns. Here, triangular and reversed triangular cases refer to discrete blowing from the blade tip in which the blowing velocity increases (triangular) or decreases (reverse triangular) linearly from the leading to trailing edge along the camber. For uniform injection, the injection velocity is kept constant for all injection holes. The total mass injection from the tip is kept the same for all injection cases. The experiments are conducted in a continuous-flow wind tunnel with a linear cascade test section and measurements involve Kiel probe traverses 0.5 axial chords downstream of the blades covering a region between 85% and 100% span as well as two-dimensional Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) measurements on 50%, 85% and 95% spanwise planes. For all injection cases, results show that tip injection reduces the total pressure loss levels in general. Highest measured overall loss reduction occurs in the case of reversed-triangular injection. The least effective waveform is observed to be triangular injection. There is significant reduction in the extent of the low momentum zone of the leakage vortex with injection. This effect is much less pronounced for the passage vortex. On the other hand, complex flow patterns are observed within the passage vortex, especially in the case of reversed-triangular injection, such as a possible embedded vortical structure along the passage vortex core, which creates double peaks in the velocity and turbulent kinetic energy fields. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.