Heat Transfer and Pressure Drop Evaluation in Thin Wedge-Shaped Trailing Edge

In modern high loaded transonic turbines the aerodynamic losses of turbine airfoils are mostly covered by the thickness and the wedge angle of the blade trailing edges. Due to the aerodynamic requirements the thin trailing edges are the life limiting parts of the airfoils. The aerodynamic design requirements lead to trailing edge slots with extreme aspect ratio and huge fillet radius in relation to the internal slot geometry. In most cases, the conventional design tools are not validated for these geometries, therefore an improved knowledge of flow and heat transfer in this area is necessary. This paper discusses the measurements of endwall heat transfer coefficient and pressure drops in a wedge-shaped duct with two different turbulators arrangement. The first one is concerning five different long ribs (pedestals) configurations disposed streamwise while the other one is related to three configurations of staggered pin fins. Pedestals and pin fins stand vertically on the bottom surface of the wedge–shaped duct. This surface, named endwall, is coated with a thin layer of thermochromic liquid crystals and several transient tests are run to obtain detailed heat transfer coefficient distributions. Both for the pedestal and pin fins several parametric studies has been performed, varying both Reynolds number range (from 9000 to 27000) and turbulators configurations while outlet Mach number was set to 0.3 for all tests. Investigated pedestal configurations are different for turbulators spanwise pitch while pin fins geometry have different pin diameter values. In all cases the wedge duct angle is 10°. Results indicate that the smallest long ribs pitch and pin fin diameter are most recommended because of its significant endwall heat transfer and moderate pressure-drop penalty. Long ribs and pin-fins are aluminium made in order to evaluate an average value of the heat transfer coefficient on their side surface. So a valuation of global heat transfer coefficient in the internal trailing edge cooling duct become possible.