An Analysis of the Secondary Flow Around a Tandem Blade Under the Presence of a Tip Gap in a High-Speed Linear Compressor Cascade

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liesbeth Konrath ◽  
Dieter Peitsch ◽  
Alexander Heinrich
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Liesbeth Konrath ◽  
Dieter Peitsch ◽  
Alexander Heinrich

Abstract Tandem blades have often been under investigation, experimentally as well as numerically, but most studies have been about tandem blade stators without tip gap. This work analyzes the influence of a tip gap on the flow field of a tandem blade for engine core compressors. Experiments have been conducted in a high-speed linear compressor cascade on a tandem and a reference geometry. The flow is analyzed using five-hole probe measurements in the wake of the blades and oil flow visualization to show the near surface stream lines. First, the results for design conditions (tandem and conventional blade) are compared to measurements on corresponding blades without tip gap. Similarities and differences in the flow topology due to the tip clearance are analyzed, showing that the introduction of the tip clearance has a similar influence on the loss and turning development for the tandem and the conventional blade. The tandem blade features two tip clearance vortices with a complex flow interaction and the possible formation of a third counter-rotating vortex between them. An incidence variation from 0deg to 5deg for both blades indicates at first a similar behavior. After a separation of the flow field into gap and non-gap half it becomes apparent that the tandem blade shows higher losses on the gap side, while featuring a close-to-constant behavior on the non-gap side. Further investigation of the flow on the gap side shows indicators of the front blade exhibiting tip clearance vortex break down.


Author(s):  
Zhiyuan Li ◽  
Juan Du ◽  
Aleksandar Jemcov ◽  
Xavier Ottavy ◽  
Feng Lin

The loss-generating mechanism of a linear compressor cascade at the corner stall condition was numerically studied in this paper. The hybrid RANS/LES method was used to perform the high-fidelity simulations. By comparing the results captured by SSTDES, DDES, SAS models with the experimental data, the SSTDES model is proven to be more accurate in capturing the detailed flow structure of the corner stall than the other two models. Taking the turbulence dissipation term of SSTDES model into account, the volumetric entropy generation rate and a new dimensionless local loss coefficient are proposed and used to analyze the loss-generating mechanism in this work. It was found that the main flow loss generated in this cascade could be sorted as the wake flow loss, the profile loss, the secondary flow loss and the endwall loss according to their amounts. The corner separation significantly affects the secondary flow loss, wake flow loss and profile loss in the cascade passage. The mixing between the separated boundary layer flow and the main flow, the shear between a tornado vortex and the main flow are the main sources of the secondary flow loss. The wake flow loss is the largest loss source of the cascade, accounting for 41.8% of the total loss. There are two peaks of the wake flow loss along the spanwise direction near the corner stall region. This phenomenon is related to the appearance of large velocity gradient flows when the main flows and the corner separation flows mix together. The profile loss takes up 40.06 % of the total loss. The profile loss intensity in the corner region is lower than the mid blade span due to the interaction of the boundary layer on the suction side with the corner separation.


Author(s):  
Liesbeth Konrath ◽  
Dieter Peitsch ◽  
Alexander Heinrich

Abstract Tandem blades have often been under investigation, experimentally as well as numerically, but most studies have been about tandem blade stators without tip gap. This work analyzes the influence of a tip gap on the flow field of a tandem blade for engine core compressors. Experiments have been conducted in a high-speed linear compressor cascade on a tandem and a reference geometry. The flow is analyzed using five-hole probe measurements in the wake of the blades and oil flow visualization to show the near surface stream lines. First, the results for design conditions (tandem and conventional blade) are compared to measurements on corresponding blades without tip gap. Similarities and differences in the flow topology due to the tip clearance are analyzed, showing that the introduction of the tip clearance has a similar influence on the loss and turning development for the tandem and the conventional blade. The tandem blade features two tip clearance vortices with a complex flow interaction and the possible formation of a third counter-rotating vortex between them. An incidence variation from 0° to 5° for both blades indicate at first a similar behavior. After a separation of the flow field into gap and non-gap half it becomes apparent that the tandem blade shows higher losses on the gap side, while featuring a close-to-constant behavior on the non-gap side. Further investigation of the flow on the gap side shows indicators of the front blade exhibiting tip clearance vortex break down, while the rear blade seems unaffected.


Author(s):  
Peter Busse ◽  
Andreas Krug ◽  
Martin Lange ◽  
Konrad Vogeler ◽  
Ronald Mailach

For most technical applications, simulations of the Reynolds-Averaged-Navier-Stokes equations has become a standard analysis tool, since it brings a good compromise between computational accuracy and costs. However, turbulence models have to be implemented to close the system of differential equations. To study the effects of turbulent boundary conditions on the prediction of the secondary flow field in a linear compressor cascade with tip clearance, the state of the art RANS solver TRACE in conjunction with Wilcox’ k-ω-turbulence model is used. Besides a stagnation point anomaly prevention, no turbomachinery specific modifications of the turbulence model are applied. Transition is not considered. The current investigations focus on the influence of the imposed turbulent inlet quantities (k0, ω0) on the development of the wall-bounded flow in the cascade. The turbulent kinetic energy k is basically described as a function of the turbulence intensity level measured in an equivalent experimental setup. For the reconstruction of turbulent fluctuations beyond measuring accessibility in the vicinity of the wall, an analytical approach is proposed and validated with DNS data of turbulent flat plate and fully developed channel flows. To identify the influence of different dissipation rates ω on the characteristics of the secondary flow, the free stream turbulent length scale LtFS is varied in four steps ranging from 0.2 up to 5 millimeters. Additionally, the effects of different span-wise length scale distributions across the inlet flow boundary layer are considered.


Author(s):  
Domenico Borello ◽  
Giovanni Delibra ◽  
Franco Rispoli

In this paper we present an innovative Partially Averaged Navier Stokes (PANS) approach for the simulation of turbomachinery flows. The elliptic relaxation k-ε-ζ-f model was used as baseline Unsteady Reynolds Averaged Navier Stokes (URANS) model for the derivation of the PANS formulation. The well established T-FlowS unstructured finite volume in-house code was used for the computations. A preliminary assessment of the developed formulation was carried out on a 2D hill flow that represents a very demanding test case for turbulence models. The turbomachinery flow here investigated reproduces the experimental campaign carried out at Virginia Tech on a linear compressor cascade with tip leakage. Their measurements were used for comparisons with numerical results. The predictive capabilities of the model were assessed through the analysis of the flow field. Then an investigation of the blade passage, where experiments were not available, was carried out to detect the main loss sources.


Author(s):  
Wei Ma ◽  
Feng Gao ◽  
Xavier Ottavy ◽  
Lipeng Lu ◽  
A. J. Wang

Recently bimodal phenomenon in corner separation has been found by Ma et al. (Experiments in Fluids, 2013, doi:10.1007/s00348-013-1546-y). Through detailed and accurate experimental results of the velocity flow field in a linear compressor cascade, they discovered two aperiodic modes exist in the corner separation of the compressor cascade. This phenomenon reflects the flow in corner separation is high intermittent, and large-scale coherent structures corresponding to two modes exist in the flow field of corner separation. However the generation mechanism of the bimodal phenomenon in corner separation is still unclear and thus needs to be studied further. In order to obtain instantaneous flow field with different unsteadiness and thus to analyse the mechanisms of bimodal phenomenon in corner separation, in this paper detached-eddy simulation (DES) is used to simulate the flow field in the linear compressor cascade where bimodal phenomenon has been found in previous experiment. DES in this paper successfully captures the bimodal phenomenon in the linear compressor cascade found in experiment, including the locations of bimodal points and the development of bimodal points along a line that normal to the blade suction side. We infer that the bimodal phenomenon in the corner separation is induced by the strong interaction between the following two facts. The first is the unsteady upstream flow nearby the leading edge whose angle and magnitude fluctuate simultaneously and significantly. The second is the high unsteady separation in the corner region.


1993 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Kang ◽  
C. Hirsch

Tip leakage flow in a linear compressor cascade of NACA 65-1810 profiles is investigated, for tip clearance levels of 1.0, 2.0 and 3.25 percent of chord at design and off-design flow conditions. Data, velocity and pressures, are collected from three transverse sections inside tip clearance and sixteen sections within flow passage. Tip separation vortex influence is identified from the data. Leakage flow mixing is clearly present inside the clearance and has a significant influence on the internal loss.


Author(s):  
Yuchen Ma ◽  
Jinfang Teng ◽  
Mingmin Zhu ◽  
Xiaoqing Qiang

Abstract Modern axial compressors are designed to be highly loaded in terms of aerodynamics, which can lead to challenges of increasing the compressor efficiency. Losses associated with secondary flow effects are well known to be the major limiting factor of improving the compressor performance. In this study, non-axisymmetric endwall contouring in a linear compressor cascade was generated through the optimization process. Combined with numerical simulation, wind tunnel tests on linear cascades with flat and contoured endwall were performed with various measurement techniques at the design and off-design conditions. The simulation results show that optimal endwall design can provide 3.08% reduction of the total pressure loss at the design condition. The reduction of pressure loss obtained is mainly below 24%span with the size of the high loss region being effectively reduced. At off-design condition, the numerical benefit of the endwall contouring is found less pronounced. The discrepancy is spotted between simulation and experiments. The experimental pressure loss reduction is mainly below 18% at ADP. And the pressure loss for the CEW increases greatly at offdesign condition in experiments. Flow patterns revealed by numerical simulations show that the separation on the blade surface is mitigated with focus point disappearing, and reverse flow on the endwall near the suction side corner is moved away from the blade surface. CFD analysis indicates that the altered pressure distribution on the endwall accelerates the flow at the suction side corner and moves the reverse flow core further downstream. The weakened interaction between the corner vortex and tornado-like vortex from the endwall near the suction side corner is the main control mechanism of the CEW. The performance improvement in the linear compressor is mainly gained from it.


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