This paper presents experimental and theoretical results for turbine cascades performing harmonic oscillations in transonic flow at design and off-design conditions. The experimental investigations were performed in an annular test facility where unsteady blade pressures were measured in two different test cascades, one operating at the nominal inlet flow angle, the other at an incidence angle exceeding the normal value by more than 20 degrees. The corresponding theoretical results were computed with a 2D Euler code which makes use of flux vector splitting in combination with a time-dependent grid generation. The present data were all obtained for tuned bending modes where the blades performed heaving oscillations with the same frequency and amplitude, but with a constant interblade phase angle. For the cascade operating at design conditions, the steady flow was purely subsonic. The other test cascade was run in transonic flow, and a normal shock appeared on the rear part of the blade’s suction surface. It was found that measured unsteady pressure and damping coefficients are well reproduced by the computed results for the first test cascade. In the case of steady off-design flow (the second test cascade), significant differences between experimental and theoretical results are observed.

A two-dimensional section of a gas turbine cascade has been investigated experimentally in an annular non-rotating cascade facility as regards to its steady-state and time-dependent aerodynamic characteristics at off-design flow conditions. The blades vibrated in the first traveling wave bending mode. Steady-state and unsteady data were obtained for an off-design incidence angle of about 22° and for an isentropic outlet Mach number of M2s=1.19. At this flow condition, a separation bubble was present on the suction surface close to the leading edge. A shock appeared at trans- and supersonic outlet flow conditions on the suction surface. The data showed high unsteady loads close to the leading edge and in the shock region. It was found that the steady and the unsteady pressures in the shock region on the blade surface seemed to be very sensitive to small changes in the flow conditions. The periodicity and repetitivity of the steady and the unsteady pressures (σ=180°) was checked at several circumferential channel positions. This was done to figure out to which extend test data obtained in an annular ring channel can serve as a basis for the comparison with numerically obtained data. The aim of this paper is to show where problems may arise when comparing calculated results with test data.

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An experimental investigation of the steady-state and time-dependent aerodynamic behaviour of a compressor cascade in a ring channel was conducted at the Laboratoire de thermique appliquée et de turbomachines (LTT) at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. The cascade consisted of 20 blades with a NACA-3506 profile, stagger angle of 40°, and solidity of 0.72 at midspan. Measurements were done for a number of incidence angles over a small range of inlet Mach numbers between ∼0.75 and ∼0.8 in order to examine the influence of an increasing angle of attack on the steady-state and time-dependent pressures. As the angle of attack increased a growing corner stall was observed at the hub and a supersonic zone appeared at the leading edge. The cascade was vibrated in bending mode with a constant amplitude at a reduced frequency of ∼0.42 at imposed interblade phase angles ranging from 0° to 324°, but also with each blade vibrating in a single blade vibration mode. The unsteady data showed that the cascade was in general damped with the minimum damping between ∼−36° to ∼+36° interblade phase angle for all examined incidence angles. The influence coefficient technique was used to identify the damping influence of each of the blades on itself (eigeninfluence) and of blades up and down the cascade (positive- and negative-sided) for different inlet incidence angles.

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