Tip gap flow and aerodynamic loss generation in a turbine cascade equipped with suction-side winglets

Abstract

The tip gap flow and aerodynamic loss generation over a plane tip equipped with a “constant-width suction-side” (CWSS) winglet and a “varying-width suction-side” (VWSS) winglet have been investigated in a turbine cascade. For a fixed tip gap of h/c = 2.0%, three different winglet widths of w/p = 5.28, 10.55, and 15.83% are tested for the CWSS winglet. The VWSS winglet is designed based on flow visualization and has almost the same winglet area as the CWSS winglet of w/p = 15.83%. In general, the suction-side winglets have a role to increase aerodynamic loss in the tip leakage vortex region but reduce aerodynamic loss in the passage vortex region. For the CWSS winglet, the total-pressure loss coefficient mass-averaged all over the measurement plane has no appreciable changes with increasing w/p from 0.0 to 10.55%, but tends to decrease with further increment of w/p. The VWSS winglet performs better in reducing aerodynamic loss in the passage vortex region than the CWSS winglet of w/p = 15.83% but leads to a little bit higher aerodynamic loss in the tip leakage vortex region. The aerodynamic loss reduction by the VWSS winglet is 7.4% in comparison with the plane tip without winglet, and is about 60% lower than that by the widest CWSS winglet.