Investigation of the tip clearance flow inside and at the exit of a compressor rotor passage. II - Turbulence properties

The flow in the tip clearance region of a compressor rotor is highly turbulent due to the strong interaction of the leakage flow with the annulus wall boundary layer. This paper deals with the turbulence properties of the flow in the tip clearance region of a moderately loaded compressor rotor. The experimental results reported in this paper were obtained using a two-sensor hot-wire probe in combination with an ensemble averaging technique. Blade-to-blade distribution of the axial and tangential turbulence intensities at various radial locations and ten axial locations (four inside the blade passage and the remaining six outside the passage) were derived from this data. Isointensity contours in the clearance region at various radial locations were also obtained from the experimental data. A region of very high turbulence intensities was indicated at the half-chord location from these results. The turbulence intensity profiles also indicated that the leakage flow travels toward the midpassage before rolling up. The turbulence is almost isotropic beyond three-quarter chord downstream of the trailing edge.