Investigation of the effects of pressure gradient, temperature and wall temperature ratio on the stagnation point heat transfer for circular cylinders and gas turbine vanes

Low and high pressure shock tubes were designed and constructed for the purpose of obtaining heat transfer data over a temperature range of 390 to 2500 K, pressures of 0.3 to 42 atm, and Mach numbers of 0.15 to 1.5 with and without pressure gradient. A square test section with adjustable top and bottom walls was constructed to produce the favorable and adverse pressure gradient over the flat plate with heat gages. A water cooled gas turbine nozzle cascade which is attached to the high pressure shock tube was obtained to measuse the heat flux over pressure and suction surfaces. Thin-film platinum heat gages with a response time of a few microseconds were developed and used to measure the heat flux for laminar, transition, and turbulent boundary layers. The laminar boundary heat flux on the shock tube wall agreed with Mirel's flat plate theory. Stagnation point heat transfer for circular cylinders at low temperature compared with the theoretical prediction, but for a gas temperature of 922 K the heat fluxes were higher than the predicted values. Preliminary flat plate heat transfer data were measured for laminar, transition, and turbulent boundary layers with and without pressure gradients for free-stream temperatures of 350 to 2575 K and flow Mach numbers of 0.11 to 1.9. The experimental heat flux data were correlated with the laminar and turbulent theories and the agreement was good at low temperatures which was not the case for higher temperatures.