Computational and Experimental Investigations of Separation Control of LP Turbine Cascade Blades using Gurney Flaps

The paper reports computational and experimental investigations carried out to control of laminar flow separation in LP turbine cascade blades at low Reynolds numbers. T106 LP turbine blade profile with a chord of 60 mm and blade spacing of 48 mm was used. The blade Zweifel loading factor was 1.03. Passive separation control device of Gurney flaps (GFs) of different shapes and sizes were used. Computations were carried out in Ansys-CFX. A two-equation eddy-viscosity turbulence model, shear stress transport (SST) was considered for all the computations along with gamma-theta (gamma-O) transition model. Computations were carried out for five different Reynolds numbers. Lift coefficient, total pressure loss coefficient, overall integrated loss coefficient and ratio of lift coefficient to overall integrated loss coefficient were used as a measure of aerodynamic performance for the cascade. From the computations, Flat and Quarter Round GFs of heights of 1.33% of chord were identified as the best configurations. Experiments in a seven bladed cascade were carried out for these configurations along with the basic configuration without GF at five Reynolds numbers. Experimental results agreed well with the computational results for these three cases at the five Reynolds numbers.