Endwall heat transfer for a turbine blade with an upstream cavity and rim seal leakage

Aerodynamic loss and endwall heat transfer for a turbine blade are influenced by complex vortical flows that are generated at the airfoil-endwall junction. In an engine, those flows interact with clearance gaps between stationary and rotating components, as well as with leakage flow that is designed to exhaust through the gaps. This paper describes experimental measurements of endwall heat transfer for a high-pressure turbine blade with an endwall overlap geometry, as well as an upstream leakage feature that supplied swirled or unswirled leakage relative to the blade. For unswirled leakage, increasing its mass flow increased the magnitude and pitchwise uniformity of the heat transfer coefficient upstream of the blades although heat transfer further into the passage was unchanged. Leakage flow with swirl shifted the horseshoe vortex in the direction of swirl and increased heat transfer on the upstream blade endwall, as compared to unswirled leakage. For a nominal leakage mass flow ratio of 0.75%, swirled leakage did not increase area-averaged heat transfer relative to unswirled leakage. At a mass flow ratio of 1.0%, however, swirled leakage increased overall heat transfer by 4% due to an increase in the strength of the vortical flows.