A Study on Impeller-Diffuser Interaction—Part I: Influence on the Performance

2003 ◽  
Vol 125 (1) ◽  
pp. 173-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kai U. Ziegler ◽  
Heinz E. Gallus ◽  
Reinhard Niehuis

The interaction between impeller and diffuser is considered to have strong influence on the flow in centrifugal compressors. However, the knowledge about this influence is still not satisfying. This two-part paper presents an experimental investigation of the effect of impeller-diffuser interaction on the unsteady and the time averaged flow field configuration in impeller and diffuser and the performance of these components. The flat wedge vaned diffuser of the investigated compressor allows an independent adjustment of diffuser vane angle and radial gap between impeller exit and diffuser vane inlet. Attention is mainly directed to the radial gap, as it determines the intensity of the impeller-diffuser interaction. Part I deals with the integral flow losses and the diffusion in impeller, diffuser and the entire compressor. An extensive test series with steady probe measurements at impeller exit and diffuser exit was performed at 10 different diffuser geometries and different operating points. The results show that in most cases smaller radial gaps are leading to a more homogeneous flow field at diffuser vane exit and to a higher diffuser pressure recovery resulting in a higher compressor efficiency. On the other hand, impeller efficiency is hardly affected by the radial gap. In Part II, measurements with a laser-2-focus velocimeter are presented illuminating the reasons for the effects found. The experimental results are published as an open CFD test case under the name “Radiver.”

Author(s):  
Kai U. Ziegler ◽  
Heinz E. Gallus ◽  
Reinhard Niehuis

The interaction between impeller and diffuser is considered to have strong influence on the flow in highly loaded centrifugal compressors. However, the knowledge about this influence is still not satisfying. This two-part paper presents an experimental investigation of the effect of impeller-diffuser interaction on the unsteady and the time averaged flow configuration in impeller and diffuser and the performance of these components. The flat wedge vaned diffuser of the investigated stage allows an independent adjustment of diffuser vane angle and radial gap between impeller exit and diffuser vane inlet. Attention is mainly directed to the radial gap, as it determines the intensity of the impeller-diffuser interaction. Part I deals with the integral flow losses and the diffusion in impeller, diffuser and the entire compressor. An extensive test series with steady probe measurements at impeller exit and diffuser exit was performed at 10 different diffuser geometries and different operating points. The results show that in most cases smaller radial gaps are leading to a more homogeneous flow field at diffuser vane exit and to a higher diffuser pressure recovery resulting in a higher compressor efficiency. On the other hand, impeller efficiency is hardly affected by the radial gap. In part II measurements with a laser-2-focus velocimeter are presented illuminating the reasons for the effects found. The experimental results are intended to be published as an open CFD testcase under the name “Radiver”.


2003 ◽  
Vol 125 (1) ◽  
pp. 183-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kai U. Ziegler ◽  
Heinz E. Gallus ◽  
Reinhard Niehuis

The interaction between impeller and diffuser is considered to have strong influence on the flow in centrifugal compressors. However, the knowledge about this influence is still not satisfying. This two-part paper presents an experimental investigation of the effect of impeller-diffuser interaction on the unsteady and the time-averaged flow field in impeller and diffuser and the performance of these components. The flat wedge vaned diffuser of the investigated compressor allows an independent adjustment of diffuser vane angle and radial gap between impeller exit and diffuser vane inlet. Attention is mainly directed to the radial gap, as it determines the intensity of the impeller-diffuser interaction. In Part I it was shown that smaller radial gaps improve diffuser pressure recovery, whereas impeller efficiency is hardly affected. Part II focuses on the reasons for these effects. Measurements with a laser-2-focus velocimeter in the highly unsteady flow field between the impeller exit region and diffuser throat were performed at three different diffuser geometries allowing a detailed flow analysis. Especially the unsteady results show that for a smaller radial gap more impeller wake fluid is conveyed towards the highly loaded diffuser vane pressure side reducing its loading and leading to a better diffusion in the diffuser channel. Concerning the impeller flow, it was found that a smaller radial gap is leading to a noticeable reduction of the wake region at impeller exit. The experimental results are intended to be published as an open CFD test case under the name “Radiver.”


Author(s):  
Kai U. Ziegler ◽  
Heinz E. Gallus ◽  
Reinhard Niehuis

The interaction between impeller and diffuser is considered to have strong influence on the flow in highly loaded centrifugal compressors. However, the knowledge about this influence is still not satisfying. This two-part paper presents an experimental investigation of the effect of impeller-diffuser interaction on the unsteady and the time averaged flow configuration in impeller and diffuser and the performance of these components. The flat wedge vaned diffuser of the investigated stage allows an independent adjustment of diffuser vane angle and radial gap between impeller exit and diffuser vane inlet. Attention is mainly directed to the radial gap, as it determines the intensity of the impeller-diffuser interaction. In part I it was shown that smaller radial gaps improve diffuser pressure recovery, whereas impeller efficiency is hardly affected. Part II focuses on the reasons for these effects. Measurements with a laser-2-focus velocimeter in the highly unsteady flow field between the impeller exit region and diffuser throat were performed at three different diffuser geometries allowing a detailed flow analysis. Especially the unsteady results show that for a smaller radial gap more impeller wake fluid is conveyed towards the highly loaded diffuser vane pressure side reducing its loading and leading to a better diffusion in the diffuser channel. Concerning the impeller flow, it was found that a smaller radial gap is leading to a noticeable reduction of the wake region at impeller exit. The experimental results are intended to be published as an open CFD testcase under the name “Radiver”.


1997 ◽  
Vol 119 (1) ◽  
pp. 122-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. L. Puterbaugh ◽  
W. W. Copenhaver

An experimental investigation concerning tip flow field unsteadiness was performed for a high-performance, state-of-the-art transonic compressor rotor. Casing-mounted high frequency response pressure transducers were used to indicate both the ensemble averaged and time varying flow structure present in the tip region of the rotor at four different operating points at design speed. The ensemble averaged information revealed the shock structure as it evolved from a dual shock system at open throttle to an attached shock at peak efficiency to a detached orientation at near stall. Steady three-dimensional Navier Stokes analysis reveals the dominant flow structures in the tip region in support of the ensemble averaged measurements. A tip leakage vortex is evident at all operating points as regions of low static pressure and appears in the same location as the vortex found in the numerical solution. An unsteadiness parameter was calculated to quantify the unsteadiness in the tip cascade plane. In general, regions of peak unsteadiness appear near shocks and in the area interpreted as the shock-tip leakage vortex interaction. Local peaks of unsteadiness appear in mid-passage downstream of the shock-vortex interaction. Flow field features not evident in the ensemble averaged data are examined via a Navier-Stokes solution obtained at the near stall operating point.


2011 ◽  
Vol 133 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bastian Schmandt ◽  
Heinz Herwig

Losses in a flow field due to single conduit components often are characterized by experimentally determined head loss coefficients K. These coefficients are defined and determined with the pressure as the critical quantity. A thermodynamic definition, given here as an alternative, is closer to the physics of flow losses, however. This definition is based upon the dissipation of mechanical energy as main quantity. With the second law of thermodynamics this dissipation can be linked to the local entropy generation in the flow field. For various conduit components K values are determined and physically interpreted by determining the entropy generation in the component as well as upstream and downstream of it. It turns out that most of the losses occur downstream of the components what carefully has to be taken into account when several components are combined in a flow network.


Author(s):  
Hiromasa Kato ◽  
Ken-ichi Funazaki

A new approach for adaptively sampling a design parameter space using an error estimate through the reconstruction of flow field by a combination of proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) and radial basis function network (RBFN) is presented. It differs from other similar approaches in that it does not use the reconstructed flow field by POD for the evaluation of objective functions, and thus it can be a subset of the flow field. Advantages of this approach include the ease of constructing a chain of simulation codes as well as the flexibility of choosing where and what to reconstruct within the solution domain. An improvement in achieving a good prediction quality, with respect to other adaptive sampling methods, has been demonstrated using supersonic impulse turbine optimization as the test case. A posteriori validation of the surrogate models were also carried out using a set of separately-evaluated samples, which showed a similar trend as the Leave-One-Out (LOO) cross-validation. The progressively enriched surrogate model was then used to achieve the more uniformly populated Pareto front with fewer number of function evaluations.


Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 919
Author(s):  
Jia Li ◽  
Xin Wang ◽  
Yue Wang ◽  
Wancheng Wang ◽  
Baibing Chen ◽  
...  

Aero-fuel centrifugal pumps are important power plants in aero-engines. Unlike most of the existing centrifugal pumps, a combination impeller is integrated with the pump to improve performance. First, the critical geometrical parameters of the combination impeller and volute are given. Then, the effects of the combination impeller on the flow characteristics of the impeller and volute are clarified by comparing simulation results with that of the conventional impeller, where the effectiveness of the selected numerical method is validated by an acceptable agreement between simulation and experiment. Finally, the experiment is set to test the external performance of the studied pump. A significant feature of this study is that the flow characteristics are significantly ameliorated by reducing the flow losses that emerged in the impeller inlet, impeller outlet, and volute tongue. Correspondingly, the head and efficiency of a combination impeller are higher with comparison to a conventional impeller. Consequently, it is a promising approach in ameliorating the flow field and improving external performance by applying a combination impeller to an aero-fuel centrifugal pump.


Author(s):  
Mehrdad Zangeneh ◽  
Damian Vogt ◽  
Christian Roduner

In this paper the application of 3D inverse design code TURBOdesign−1 to the design of the vane geometry of a centrifugal compressor vaned diffuser is presented. For this study the new diffuser is designed to match the flow leaving the conventional impeller, which is highly non-uniform. The inverse method designs the blade geometry for a given specification of thickness and blade loading distribution. The paper describes the choice of loading distribution used in the design as well as the influence of the diffuser inlet flow distribution on the vane geometry and flow field. The flow field in the new diffuser is analysed by a 3D viscous flow code and the result is compared to that of the conventional diffuser. Finally the results of testing the stage performance of the new diffuser is compared with that of the conventional stage.


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