Development of the Unsteady Flow on a Turbine Rotor Platform Downstream of a Rim Seal

Abstract

In high temperature turbines, air from disk cavities is forced through the vane-rotor seal to prevent hot gas ingress into these cavities. This emergent seal air can play a significant role in the formation of secondary flows which emanate from the hub region near the rotor blade leading edge. The formation of these structures is also dependent on the inherently unsteady flow field driven by the vane-rotor interaction. As these secondary flows play an important role in both blade performance and heat transfer, the physics that governs them is of significant interest in turbine aero and thermal design. This work investigates and characterizes the aerodynamic signature of the interaction between an emergent seal flow and the hub flow approaching the downstream rotor including the effects of vane-rotor interaction. This is accomplished by means of an experimental investigation performed on the first stage of the Purdue Research Turbine using Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV). The flow field is interrogated in the near-hub region of the intra-stage space, downstream of the first vane row. Purge air is introduced through a planar seal at two different flow rates which characterize typical high and low boundaries for the range of dimensionless seal flow rates encountered in practice. Two-dimensional (radial and axial) velocity data from four measurement planes spaced from vane pressure side to mid-passage are acquired. These data are phase-locked to rotor position. The ensemble-averaged vorticity data from each of ten rotor positions provide a characterization of the effect of the rotor potential field on the emergent seal flow. Vane wake affects on purge strength and downstream flow development are captured at each of two seal flow rates.