Experimental measurements of turbulent junction flow using high speed stereo PIV and IR thermography

Turbulent junction flow is commonly seen in various turbomachinery components, heat exchangers, submarine appendages, and wing-fuselage attachments, where the approach boundary layer separates and rolls up into a coherent system of vortices upstream of a bluff body. The highly unsteady behavior of this flow causes high pressure fluctuations on the wall, and if the fluid temperature is different than the wall temperature, also causes high heat transfer. One of the signature features of these flows is a bimodal distribution of velocity around the vortex system. In this paper, the flow physics as well as heat transfer of the turbulent junction flow are investigated using PIV and IR measurements respectively. Among the three objectives of this paper, the first one is to demonstrate the unique experimental setup that captures temporally resolved turbulent flow-field measurements. The second objective is to analyze the dynamics of primary vortex for various Reynolds numbers. The final objective is to investigate the effect of the unsteady junction flow on the endwall heat transfer.