Mitigation of Turbine Vane Shock Waves Through Trailing Edge Cooling

The immense market demand on the high efficiency and lightweight aero-engines results in designs with compact high-pressure turbine stages experiencing supersonic flow field. In supersonic turbines, shocks appear at the vane trailing edges. The interaction of these shock with the neighbouring airfoils and blades on the adjacent rotor row and consequently create considerable amount of losses on the aerodynamic performance of the turbine. Moreover, periodic excitation created by the interaction of the shock waves and the motion of the turbine rotor causes fatigue problems and reduces the lifetime of the engine. Current study aims to alter the vane shock waves through blowing at the trailing edge. In order to characterize the effect of active blowing on the trailing edge flow field, a series of URANS simulations were conducted on OpenFOAM solver platform. Various blowing schemes were simulated over a simplified trailing edge geometry exposed in supersonic flow. The computations were compared in terms of shock intensity, oscillation frequency and exerted pressure forcing over the downstream components. The results showed that unsteady trailing edge blowing were able to modify the fluctuations observed on the shocks by altering the shock intensity, angle and frequency of oscillations. The classification of the wake unsteadiness, i.e. vortex shedding, in terms of trailing edge characteristics were also accomplished through frequency domain analysis of simulations.