Effect of Blade Tip Geometry on Tip Flow and Heat Transfer for a Blade in a Low Speed Cascade

A comprehensive investigation of the effect of various tip sealing geometries is presented on the blade tip leakage flow and associated heat transfer of a scaled up HPT turbine blade in a low-speed wind tunnel facility. The linear cascade is made of four blades with the two corner blades acting as guides. The tip section of a HPT first stage rotor blade is used to fabricate the 2-D blade. The wind tunnel accommodates an 116° turn for the blade cascade. The mainstream Reynolds number based on the axial chord length at cascade exit is 4.83 × 10⁵. The upstream wake effect is simulated with a spoked wheel wake generator placed upstream of the cascade. A turbulence grid placed even farther upstream generates the required free-stream turbulence of 4.8%. The center blade has a tip clearance gap of 1.5625% with respect to the blade span. Static pressure measurements are obtained on the blade surface and the shroud. The effect of crosswise trip strips to reduce leakage flow and associated heat transfer is investigated with strips placed along the leakage flow direction, against the leakage flow and along the chord. Cylindrical pin fins and pitch variation of strips over the tip surface are also investigated. Detailed heat transfer measurements are obtained using a steady state HSI-based liquid crystal technique. The effect of periodic unsteady wake effect is also investigated by varying the wake Strouhal number from 0. to 0.2, and to 0.4. Results show that the trip strips placed against the leakage flow produce the lowest heat transfer on the tips compared to all the other cases with a reduction between 10–15% compared to the plain tip. Results also show that the pitch of the strips has a small effect on the overall reduction. Cylindrical pins fins and strips along the leakage flow direction do not decrease the heat transfer coefficients and in some cases enhance the heat transfer coefficients by as much as 20%.