Investigation of Endwall Heat Transfer in Staggered Pin Fin Arrays

Arrays of staggered pin fins are a typical geometry found in the trailing edge region of modern airfoils. If coolant is supplied by bleeding from the mid-section of the airfoil instead of provided through the root, the channel length is insufficiently long to reach a fully developed flow which is commonly found from the fifth row downstream. This present study focuses on the developing section (four rows) of a staggered array with a height-to-diameter ratio of 2 and a spanwise and streamwise spacing of 2.5, respectively. Measurements are conducted at Reynolds numbers of 10,000 and 30,000 based on the maximum velocity and pin diameter. Stereoscopic particle image velocimetry (PIV) is used to describe the flow field and turbulence characteristics in the wake of the first and third row pin. It is found that the dominating vortical structures depend highly on the Reynolds number. A transient thermochromic liquid crystal (TLC) technique is used to obtain local heat transfer coefficients on the endwall which are then discussed in the context with the vortical structures. The structure of the horseshoe vortex and the transient wake shedding behaves differently in the first and third row. The interaction of both vortex systems affects directly the endwall heat transfer. The results are supplemented by a thorough discussion of TLC and PIV uncertainty.