Heat Transfer Characteristics on the Tip Surface of a High-Turning Turbine Rotor Blade

The heat/mass transfer characteristics on the plane tip surface of a high-turning first-stage turbine rotor blade has been investigated by employing the naphthalene sublimation technique. At the Reynolds number of 2.09x10(5), heat/mass transfer coefficients are measured for the tip gap height-to-chord ratio, h/c, of 2.0% at turbulence levels of Tu = 0.3 and 14.7%. A tip-surface flow visualization is also performed for h/c = 2.0% at Tu = 0.3%. The results show that there exists a strong flow separation/re-attachment process, which results in severe local thermal load along the pressure-side corner, and a pair of vortices named "tip gap vortices" in this study is identified along the pressure-and suction-side tip corners near the leading edge. The loci and subsequent development of the pressure-and suction-side tip gap vortices are discussed in detail. The combustor-level high inlet turbulence, which increases the tip-surface heat/mass transfer, provides more uniform thermal-load distribution.