Turbulent Transport on the Endwall in the Region Between Adjacent Turbine Blades

The complex three-dimensional flow in the endwall region near the base of a turbine blade has an important impact on the local heat transfer. The initial horseshoe vortex, the passage vortex, and resulting corner vortices cause large variations in heat transfer over the entire endwall region. Due to these large surface gradients in heat transfer, conventional measurement techniques generally do not provide an accurate determination of the local heat transfer coefficients. In the present study, the heat/mass transfer analogy is used to examine the local transport coefficients for two different endwall boundary layer thicknesses and two free-stream Reynolds numbers. A linear turbine blade cascade is used in conjunction with a removable endwall plate. Naphthalene (C₁₀H₈) is cast into a mold on the plate and the rate of naphthalene sublimation is determined at 6000 + locations on the simulated endwall by employing a computer-aided data acquisition system. This technique allows one to obtain detailed contour plots of the local convection coefficient over the entire endwall. By examining the mass transfer contours, it is possible to infer information on the three-dimensional flow in the passage between the blades. Extremely high transport coefficients on the endwall indicate locations of potential overheating and failure in an actual turbine.