Impact of High-Pressure-Turbine Purge Flow on the Evolution of Turbulence in a Turbine Vane Frame

Abstract

Abstract This paper describes the measurement and postprocessing of turbulence data. The experiments were carried out in a two-stage, two-spool transonic turbine test rig at the Institute for Thermal Turbomachinery and Machine Dynamics at the Graz University of Technology, which includes relevant purge and turbine rotor tip leakage flows. The test setup consists of a high-pressure turbine (HPT) stage, a turbine vane frame (TVF) with turning struts and splitters, and a counter-rotating low-pressure turbine (LPT) to allow engine realistic measurements. Time-resolved area traverse measurements have been performed for three different operating conditions in three measurement planes downstream of the HPT rotor, which enable the measurement of the turbulence quantities at the TVF inlet and outlet as well as the LPT outlet. The turbulence quantities are evaluated using triaxial- and single hot-film probes by means of Constant-Temperature-Anemometry, and their results were validated with five-hole probe (FHP) measurements. Ensemble- and time-averaging, as well as Fourier transforms, were applied for data reduction. It is shown how the turbulence intensity and integral length scale vary over different purge flowrates (PFR). The acquired measurement data illustrate that the interaction of the ejected purge flow with mean flow enhances the turbulent mixing in the secondary flow structures at the TVF inlet and TVF outlet, respectively. Furthermore, the flow downstream of the LPT rotor is affected by TVF and LPT rotor secondary flow structures, which are identified as high turbulence regions. These regions strongly depend on the purge flowrate. These results acquired under engine realistic rig flow conditions enable a deeper understanding of the relationship between loss and turbulence quantities and will help improve the application of computational fluid dynamics turbulence models to turbomachinery modeling.