High Resolution Heat Transfer Measurements on the Stator Endwall of an Axial Turbine

In order to continue increasing the efficiency of gas turbines, an important effort is made on the thermal management of the turbine stage. In particular understanding and accurately estimating the thermal loads in a vane passage is of primary interest to engine designers looking to optimize the cooling requirements and ensure the integrity of the components. This paper focuses on the measurement of endwall heat transfer in a vane passage with a 3D airfoil shape and cylindrical endwalls. It also presents a comparison with predictions performed using an in-house developed RANS solver featuring a specific treatment of the numerical smoothing using a flow adaptive scheme. The measurements have been performed in a steady state axial turbine facility on a novel platform developed for heat transfer measurements and integrated to the nozzle guide vane row of the turbine. A quasi-isothermal boundary condition is used to obtain both the heat transfer coefficient and the adiabatic wall temperature within a single measurement day. The surface temperature is measured using infrared thermography through small view ports. The infrared camera is mounted on a robot-arm with six degrees of freedom to provide high resolution surface temperature and a full coverage of the vane passage. The paper presents results from experiments with two different flow conditions obtained by varying the mass flow through the turbine: measurements at the design point (Re_Cax = 7,2.10⁵) and at a reduced mass flow rate (Re_Cax = 5,2.10⁵). The heat transfer quantities, namely the heat transfer coefficient and the adiabatic wall temperature, are derived from measurements at 14 different isothermal temperatures. The experimental data are supplemented with numerical predictions that are deduced from a set of adiabatic and diabatic simulations. In addition, the predicted flow field in the passage is used to highlight the link between the heat transfer patterns measured and the vortical structures present in the passage.