The Oxford Turbine Research Facility (OTRF) is a major test facility. It was designed and built by the Department of Engineering Science for the Ministry of Defence (MOD-DERA), and operated on their Pyestock and Farnborough sites for about twenty years. Now owned by the University of Oxford and housed in the Southwell Building, it comprises one and a half stages of axial turbine.
The piston tunnel achieves engine representative Reynolds and Mach numbers during a flow pulse of about 0.5 seconds. The rotor spins at 9500rpm and thin film gauge instrumentation enables measurements of heat transfer on the blades, vanes and end walls. On shaft torque measurements and high resolution total pressure, velocity and temperature surveys are used to measure stage efficiency. The vanes and blades can be cooled by air or foreign gas (to achieve engine density ratio).
The OTRF has been updated to include a temperature distortion representative of rich burn.
