Experimental Study on the Endwall Aerothermal Performance of Turbine Cascades in a Novel Transient Test Facility

Linear turbine cascades have been widely used to conduct fundamental and applied investigations, but only a few transient test facilities with the linear turbine cascade are available in the open literature. A novel transient test facility was presented in this paper, including detailed design and structure, and various experimental measurements (aerodynamic and thermodynamic) were conducted to verify the transient test facility’s capability. This test facility mainly includes a main air supply line (bypass line and test line), a coolant supply line, a test section, and a control system (heater and various valves). The linear cascade holds up six equally spaced cascade profiles, forming five completed cascade passages, and the center passage is used for aerodynamic and thermodynamic measurements. The aerodynamic loss and heat transfer performance were measured at various flow conditions (incidence angle, Ma, and blowing ratio (BR)). The endwall heat transfer coefficient and film cooling effectiveness were estimated by adopting a dual linear regression technique. Results indicate that the mianstream pressure and temperature present a desired step change, and remain relatively steady in the test window. The magnitudes of endwall heat transfer significantly increase as the Ma_ex increases from 0.2 to 0.5, but the thermal load distributions remain the same. The BR is a key parameter for endwall film cooling performance, and the optimal film cooling coverage is acquired at the critical value of BR. Both insufficient and excessive coolant flowrate can result in undesirable endwall film cooling coverage, and may cause unnecessary consumption of the coolant flow.