An Experimental and Numerical Investigation of the Effect of Combustor-Nozzle Platform Misalignment on Endwall Heat Transfer at Transonic High Turbulence Conditions

A detailed experimental and numerical study has been conducted to investigate the endwall heat transfer characteristics on a nozzle platform that has been misaligned with the combustor exit, resulting in a backward facing step at the nozzle inlet. The study was carried out under transonic engine representative conditions with an exit Mach number of 0.85 (Re_exit = 1.5 × 10⁶), and an inlet turbulence intensity of 16%. A transient infrared thermography technique coupled with endwall static pressure ports, were used to map the endwall surface heat transfer and aerodynamic characteristics respectively. A numerical study was also conducted by solving the steady state Reynolds Averaged Navier Stokes (RANS) equations using the commercial CFD solver ANSYS Fluent v.15. The numerical results were then validated by comparing to experiment data and good agreement was observed. The results reveal that the classical endwall secondary flows (endwall crossflows, horseshoe and passage vortices) are weakened and a unique auxiliary vortex system develops within the passage and interacts with the weakened horseshoe vortex. It is observed that heat transfer in the first half of the passage endwall is heavily influenced by this auxiliary vortex system. Heat transfer augmentation of between 15% and 40% was also observed throughout the NGV endwall. Furthermore, the auxiliary vortex system results in a delayed cross-passage migration of the horseshoe vortex which consequently results in large lateral gradient in heat transfer downstream of the throat.