Studies on Two-Dimensional Contouring of High-Lift Turbine Airfoil Suction Surface as Separation-Control Device: Separation Suppression Under Steady-State Flow Conditions

The study the present authors have been working on is to develop a new method to increase aerodynamic loading of low-pressure turbine airfoils for modern aeroengines to a great extent, which is to achieve drastic reduction of their airfoil counts. For this purpose, this study proposes two-dimensional contouring of the airfoil suction surface as a device to suppress the separation bubble that causes large aerodynamic loss, especially at low Reynolds number condition. The main objective of this paper is to show how and to what extent the surface contouring without any other disturbances affects the suction surface boundary layer accompanying separation bubble. For comparison, rather conventional tripping wire technique is also employed as “local 2D surface contouring” to generate flow disturbances in order to suppress the separation bubble. All measurements are carried out under steady-state flow conditions with low freestream turbulence. It turns out from the detailed experiments and LES analysis that the newly proposed two-dimensional contouring of the airfoil surface can effectively suppress the separation bubble, resulting in significant improvement of cascade aerodynamic performance.Copyright © 2011 by ASME