Experimental Investigation of Pressure Side Flow Separation on the T106C Airfoil at High Suction Side Incidence Flow

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The objective of this work is to study the influence of a pressure side separation bubble on the profile losses and the development of the bubble in the blade passage. For the experimental investigations, the T106 profile is used, with an increased loading due to an enlarged pitch to chord ratio from 0.799 to 0.95 (T106C). The experiments were performed at the high-speed cascade wind tunnel of the Institute of Jet Propulsion at the University of the Federal Armed Forces Munich. The main feature of the wind tunnel is to vary Reynolds and Mach number independently to achieve realistic turbomachinery conditions. The focus of this work is to determine the influence of a pressure side separation on the profile losses and hence the robustness to suction side incidence flow. The cascade is tested at four incidence angles from 0 deg to −22.7 deg to create separation bubbles of different sizes. The influence of the Reynolds number is investigated for a wide range at constant exit Mach number. Therefore, a typical exit Mach number for low pressure turbines in the range of 0.5–0.8 is chosen in order to consider compressible effects. Furthermore, two inlet turbulence levels of about 3% and 7.5% have been considered. The characteristics of the separation bubble are identified by using the profile pressure distributions, whereas wake traverses with a five hole probe are used to determine the influence of the pressure side separation on the profile losses. Further, time-resolved pressure measurements near the trailing edge as well as single hot wire measurements in the blade passage are conducted to investigate the unsteady behavior of the pressure side separation process itself and also its influence on the midspan passage flow.