In this paper, the merits and demerits of endwall modification by designing micro-scale ribs onto the turbine endwall surface was examined experimentally for two aspects: cooling performance and heat transfer characteristics. The experiment was conducted on ribbed endwall with three rib directions (horizontal, vertical and tiled rib) and two rib spacings (8 mm and 10 mm) and compared with the flat endwall. The measurement of heat transfer was conducted with a high-resolution infrared thermal camera and that of cooling effectiveness (η) was conducted with pressure-sensitive paint technique. Results showed that the direction of rib and rib-induced vortex greatly affects the coverage of coolant, which the tilted and vertical ribbed endwall demonstrated positive effects on film cooling. Additionally, the heat transfer of the ribbed endwall is also connected with the layout of the rib and mainly depends on the joint influence of the rib-induced vortex and passage vortex. The Nusselt number (Nu) of the vertical rib was the smallest. In general, vertical rib with larger rib spacing shows the comprehensive performance, that an increase of 9.5% for area-averaged η than original endwall with mass flow rate of 1.0% and the least increase of Nu, which can provide guidelines for future cooling design.
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