Purge Flow Impact on Turbine Stage and Seal Performance at Varying Cavity Purge Rates and Operating Speed

The impact of the wheelspace cavity purge flow on a high-pressure axial low-reaction turbine stage is investigated. Both the flow's sealing ability and the performance impact associated with its injection are studied. Two operating speeds are tested, namely a high loading case and the peak efficiency, with purge flow rates covering a wide range. As the purge flow is injected upstream of the rotor, the sealing effectiveness is quantified both radially and tangentially close to the rim seal, where the tangential variation is used to identify the seal mixing region. Having passed the rotor blading, the purge flow distribution in the main annulus is quantified, showing an influence of operating speed. The purge flow core is localized to the trace of the vane wake, however somewhat migrated while passing through the blading. The combination of measurements shows that the impact on flow parameters cannot be used to determine the spanwise transport of the purge flow; hence two techniques are necessary to both judge the spanwise transport and impact on flow. With known sealing effectiveness, industry correlations may be adapted to make use of the variation of necessary purge rate to obtain a certain degree of effectiveness at a given operating point, and thereby optimize the efficiency. Also the distribution of the coolant in the main flow path may be used to optimize film cooling in that area.QC 20171129