Purge flows are necessary for ensuring that hot gasses do not penetrate the thermally sensitive rim seal and disk cavity regions of turbines. The temperature and mass flow rate of the purge air can affect the component life and aerodynamic performance of a turbine stage. Therefore it is of interest to understand the basic mechanisms that govern this complex flow problem. The present work focuses on two turbine rim seal investigations. The first focused on temperature measurements in the rim cavity region of a rotating, high-speed, low-pressure turbine as means to quantify a rim seal's effectiveness. The seal had a realistic geometry with a small axial overlap between the stationary and rotating components. The purge flow rate was varied from 0 to 1 percent of the core mass flow rate. The results will describe the temperatures as well as the seal's effectiveness as a function of the purge flow rate, and turbine operating point. The second was a study on the effect of purge flow on the aerodynamic performance of a turbine stage. Exit flow field surveys were taken in both a low pressure turbine stage and a high pressure turbine stage. Also a computational study was done on the low pressure turbine stage to add insight into the effect of purge flow on turbine stage performance. In addition, the computation results provide insight into the effect of purge flow on the low pressure turbine blade passage flow field.