The influence of blade lean on straight and annular turbine cascade flow field

The work proposes a detailed description of the flow field throughout leaned turbine nozzles and reports a sensitivity analysis with respect to the lean angle. A phenomenological approach focuses the attention on pressure contours distribution on both inside and outside the passage. The study involves both straight and annular cascades mounting a typical intermediate reaction degree section, designed for steam turbines. Blades are built by stacking the same 2D profile along different linear axes, characterized by different angles with respect to the normal or radial direction: 0 deg for prismatic blade and 10 deg, 15 deg, and 20 deg for the leaned ones are considered. Experimental and numerical tests were performed at the nominal inlet flow angle in order to avoid any effect related to blade sweep. Experimental tests were carried out at the design outlet Mach number of 0.65; measurements were performed at the Laboratorio di Fluidodinamica delle Macchine of Politecnico di Milano. Only linear cascades with prismatic and 20 deg leaned blades were experimentally tested, providing data both downstream and inside the blade passage by means of pressure probe traversing, endwall pressure taps, and oil flow visualization. Experimental results were also used to validate the numerical setup, which provided a detailed computational picture of the flow field throughout the channel. The influence of the pressure contours’ shape on secondary vorticity activity downstream of the passage is highlighted and discussed, focusing the attention on secondary structures and loss distribution in this region. The resulting description of the flow field, based on the representation of pressure contours, supports the sensitivity analysis with respect to the blade lean angle, identifying the mechanism that leads the secondary vorticity to grow in regions where secondary losses and blade loading decrease.