Aeroelastic aspects of Axial Compressor Stage with Self-Recirculating Casing Treatment

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-34
Author(s):  
S Satish Kumar ◽  
Dilipkumar Bhanudasji Alone ◽  
Shobhavathy Thimmaiah ◽  
J Rami Reddy Mudipalli ◽  
Lakshya Kumar ◽  
...  

Abstract For successful implementation of casing treatment designs in axial compressors, apart from the stall margin improvement benefits, aeroelasticity also plays a major role. This manuscript addresses the not often discussed aeroelastic aspects of a new discrete type of passive Self-Recirculating Casing Treatment (RCT) designed for a transonic axial compressor stage. Experiments are carefully designed for synchronized measurement of the unsteady fluidic disturbances and vibrations during rotating stall for compressor with baseline solid casing and Self-RCT. The modal characteristics of the axial compressor rotor-disk assembly are studied experimentally and numerically. Experimentally it is observed that the rotating stall cells excite the blades in their fundamental mode in a compressor with baseline solid casing at the stall flow condition. In contrast, there is no excitation of the blades in the compressor with self-recirculating casing treatment at the same solid casing stall flow condition. Also, the self-recirculating casing treatment compared to the solid casing can significantly reduce the overall vibration levels of the blades that are excited at the stall flow condition. The casing treatment is able to alter the flow field near the tip region of the rotor blade, and hence influencing the forcing function of the rotating cantilever blades to have the aeroelastic benefit.

Author(s):  
HaoGuang Zhang ◽  
Feng Tan ◽  
YanHui Wu ◽  
WuLi Chu ◽  
Wei Wang ◽  
...  

For compressor blade tip stall, one effective way of extending stable operating range is with the application of circumferential grooved casing treatment and its validity was proved by a lot of experimental and numerical investigations. The emphases of most circumferential grooved investigations are focused on the influence of groove depth and groove number on compressor stability, and there is few investigations dealt with the center offset degree of circumferential grooves casing treatment. Hence, an axial compressor rotor with casing treatment (CT) was investigated with experimental and numerical methods to explore the effect of center offset degree on compressor stability and performance. In the work reported here, The center offset degree is defined as the ratio of the central difference between rotor tip axial chord and CT to the axial chord length of rotor tip. When the center of CT is located within the upstream direction of the center of rotor tip axial chord, the value of center offset degree is positive. The experimental and numerical results show that stall margin improvement gained with CT is reduced as the value of center offset degree varies from 0 to 0.33 or −0.33, and the CT with −0.33 center offset degree achieves the lowest value of stall margin improvement at 53% and 73% design rotational speed. The detailed analysis of the flow-field in compressor tip indicates that there is not positive effect made by grooves on leading edge of rotor blade tip when the value of center offset degree is −0.33. As the mass flow of compressor reduces further, tip clearance leakage flow results in the outlet blockage due to the absence of the positive action of grooves near blade tip tail when the value of center offset degree is 0.33. Blockage does not appear in rotor tip passage owing to utilizing the function of all grooves with CT of 0 center offset degree.


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

Slot-type casing treatment generally has a great potential of enhancing the operating range for tip-critical compressor rotors, however, with remarkable efficiency drop. Part I of this two-part paper was committed to develop a slot configuration with desired stall margin improvement and minimized efficiency loss. Steady simulation was carried out in a 1.5 transonic axial compressor stage at part design rotating speed. At this rotating speed this compressor stage operated at a subsonic condition and showed a rather narrow operating range, which needed to be improved badly. Flow fields analysis at peak efficiency and near stall point showed that the development of tip leakage vortex and resulting blockage near casing resulted in numerical stall. Three kinds of skewed slots with same rotor exposure and casing porosity were designed according to the tip flow field and some empirical strategies. Among three configurations, arc-curved skewed slot showed minimum peak efficiency drop with considerable stall margin improvement. Then rotor exposure and casing porosity were varied based on the original arc-curved skewed slot, with a special interest in detecting their impact on the compressor stability and overall efficiency. Result showed that smaller rotor exposure and casing porosity leaded to less efficiency drop. But meanwhile, effectiveness of improving compressor stability was weakened. The relation between efficiency drop and stall margin improvement fell on a smooth continuous curve throughout all slots configurations, indicating that the detrimental effect of casing treatment on compressor was inevitable. Flow analysis was carried out for cases of smooth casing and three arc-curved configurations at smooth casing near stall condition. The strength of suction/injection, tip leakage flow behavior and removal of blockage near casing were detailed examined. Larger rotor tip exposure and slots number contributed to stronger injection flow. The loss generated within the mixing process of injection flow with main flow and leakage flow is the largest source of entropy increase. Further loss mechanisms were interpreted at eight axial cuts, which were taken through the blade row and slots to show the increase in entropy near tip region. Entropy distributions manifested that loss generations with smooth casing were primarily ascribed to low-momentum tip leakage flow/vortex and suction surface separation at leading edge. CU0 slot, the arc-curved slots with 50% rotor tip exposure, was capable of suppressing the suction surface separation loss. Meanwhile, accelerated tip leakage flow brought about additional loss near casing and pressure surface. Upstream high entropy flow would be absorbed into the rear portion of slots repeatedly, resulting in further loss.


Author(s):  
Haixin Chen ◽  
Xudong Huang ◽  
Ke Shi ◽  
Song Fu ◽  
Matthew A. Bennington ◽  
...  

Numerical investigations were conducted to predict the performance of a transonic axial compressor rotor with circumferential groove casing treatment. The Notre Dame Transonic Axial Compressor (ND-TAC) was simulated by Tsinghua University with an in-house CFD code (NSAWET) for this work. Experimental data from the ND-TAC were used to define the geometry, boundary conditions and data sampling method for the numerical simulation. These efforts, combined with several unique simulation approaches, such as non-matched grid boundary technology to treat the periodic boundaries and interfaces between groove grids and the passage grid, resulted in good agreement between the numerical and experimental results for overall compressor performance and radial profiles of exit total pressure. Efforts were made to study blade level flow mechanisms to determine how the casing treatment impacts the compressor’s stall margin and performance. The flow structures in the passage, the tip gap and the grooves as well as their mutual interactions were plotted and analyzed. The flow and momentum transport across the tip gap in the smooth wall and the casing treatment configurations were quantitatively compared.


2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 1-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dilipkumar Bhanudasji Alone ◽  
S. Satish Kumar ◽  
Shobhavathy M. Thimmaiah ◽  
Janaki Rami Reddy Mudipalli ◽  
A. M. Pradeep ◽  
...  

This paper presents experimental results of a single stage transonic axial flow compressor coupled with low porosity bend skewed casing treatment. The casing treatment has a plenum chamber above the bend slots. The depth of the plenum chamber is varied to understand its impact on the performance of compressor stage. The performance of the compressor stage is evaluated for casing treatment and plenum chamber configurations at two axial locations of 20% and 40%. Experimental results reveal that the stall margin of the compressor stage increases with increase in the plenum chamber volume. Hot-wire measurements show significant reduction in the turbulence intensity with increase in the plenum chamber volume compared to that with the solid casing at the stall condition. At higher operating speeds of 80% and at 20% axial coverage, the stall margin of the compressor increases by 20% with half and full plenum depth. The improvement in the peak stage efficiency observed is 4.6% with half plenum configuration and 3.34% with the full plenum configuration. The maximum improvement in the stall margin of 29.16% is obtained at 50% operating speed with full plenum configurations at 40% axial coverage.


Author(s):  
Yanling Li ◽  
Abdulnaser Sayma

Gas turbine axial compressor blades may encounter damage during service for various reasons. Debris from casing or foreign objects may impact blades causing damage near the rotor’s tip. This may result in deterioration of performance and reduction in the surge margin. Ability to assess the effect of damaged blades on the compressor performance and stability is important at both the design stage and in service. The damage to compressor blades breaks the cyclic symmetry of the compressor assembly. Thus computations have to be performed using the whole annulus. Moreover, if rotating stall or surge occurs, the downstream boundary conditions are not known and simulations become difficult. This paper presents an unsteady CFD analysis of compressor performance with tip curl damage. Tip curl damage typically occurs when rotor blades hit a loose casing liner. The computations were performed up to the stall boundary, predicting rotating stall patterns. The aim is to assess the effect of blade damage on stall margin and provide better understanding of the flow behaviour during rotating stall. Computations for the undamaged rotor are also performed for comparison. A transonic axial compressor rotor is used for the time-accurate numerical unsteady flow simulations, with a variable choked nozzle downstream simulating an experimental throttle. One damaged blade was introduced in the rotor assembly and computations were performed at 60% of the design rotational speed. It was found that there is no significant effect on the compressor stall margin due to one damaged blade despite the differences in rotating stall patterns between the undamaged and damaged assemblies.


Author(s):  
Yassine Souleimani ◽  
Huu Duc Vo ◽  
Hong Yu

The increase in compressor tip clearance over the lifespan of an aero-engine leads to a long-term degradation in its fuel consumption and operating envelope. A highly promising recent numerical study on a theoretical high-speed axial compressor rotor proposed a novel casing treatment to decrease performance and stall margin sensitivity to tip clearance increase. This paper aims to apply and analyze, through CFD simulations, this casing treatment concept to a representative production axial compressor rotor with inherently lower sensitivity to tip clearance increase and complement the explanation on the mechanism behind the reduction in sensitivity. Simulations of the baseline rotor showed that the lower span region contribute as much to the pressure ratio sensitivity as the tip region which is dominated by tip leakage flow. In contrast, the efficiency sensitivity is mainly driven by losses occurring in the tip region. The novel casing treatment was successfully applied to the baseline rotor through a design refinement. Although the casing treatment causes some penalty in nominal performance, it completely reversed the pressure ratio sensitivity (i.e. pressure ratio increases with tip clearance) and reduced the efficiency sensitivity. The reversed pressure ratio sensitivity is explained by a rotation in the core flow in the lower span region indirectly induced by the flow injection from the casing treatment. The lower efficiency sensitivity comes from a reduction in the amount of fluid that crosses the tip clearance of two adjacent blades, known as double leakage. The casing treatment’s beneficial effect on stall margin sensitivity is less obvious because of the stall inception type of the baseline rotor and its change in the presence of the casing treatment.


1980 ◽  
Vol 102 (2) ◽  
pp. 134-151 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. M. Greitzer

Stall in compressors can be associated with the initiation of several types of fluid dynamic instabilities. These instabilities and the different phenomena, surge and rotating stall, which result from them, are discussed in this paper. Assessment is made of the various methods of predicting the onset of compressor and/or compression system instability, such as empirical correlations, linearized stability analyses, and numerical unsteady flow calculation procedures. Factors which affect the compressor stall point, in particular inlet flow distortion, are reviewed, and the techniques which are used to predict the loss in stall margin due to these factors are described. The influence of rotor casing treatment (grooves) on increasing compressor flow range is examined. Compressor and compression system behavior subsequent to the onset of stall is surveyed, with particular reference to the problem of engine recovery from a stalled condition. The distinction between surge and rotating stall is emphasized because of the very different consequences on recoverability. The structure of the compressor flow field during rotating stall is examined, and the prediction of compressor performance in rotating stall, including stall/unstall hysteresis, is described.


Author(s):  
N. A. Cumpsty

Results are presented and discussed from an axial compressor rotor operated with an axial skewed slot casing treatment over part of the circumference. The compressor was one for which stall was initiated in the tip region and for this type there is some potential for stall margin improvement with lower loss using this. The main significance of the experiments is, however, the possibility of looking at aspects of stall inception. Normally stall inception is a brief transient with an unknown start time and is difficult to study but with the partial casing treatment it was possible to make the untreated section operate continuously in such a way that it underwent the processes normally leading to stall. For a tip stalling rotor the experiments identify the annulus boundary layer as the crucial region of the flow and spillage of the tip-clearance flow forward of the blades as a process leading to the rapid build up of blockage prior to instability and stall.


2013 ◽  
Vol 136 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Haixin Chen ◽  
Xudong Huang ◽  
Ke Shi ◽  
Song Fu ◽  
Mark Ross ◽  
...  

Numerical investigations were conducted to predict the performance of a transonic axial compressor rotor with circumferential groove casing treatment. The Notre Dame Transonic Axial Compressor (ND-TAC) was simulated at Tsinghua University with an in-house computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code (NSAWET) for this work. Experimental data from the ND-TAC were used to define the geometry, boundary conditions, and data sampling method for the numerical simulation. These efforts, combined with several unique simulation approaches, such as nonmatched grid boundary technology to treat the periodic boundaries and interfaces between groove grids and the passage grid, resulted in good agreement between the numerical and experimental results for overall compressor performance and radial profiles of exit total pressure. Efforts were made to study blade level flow mechanisms to determine how the casing treatment impacts the compressor's stall margin and performance. The flow structures in the passage, the tip gap, and the grooves as well as their mutual interactions were plotted and analyzed. The flow and momentum transport across the tip gap in the smooth wall and the casing treatment configurations were quantitatively compared.


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