Viscous Flow Field Calculations in High-Loaded Centrifugal Compressor Diffusers
The topic of this paper is the computation of transonic turbulent flow fields in high-loaded centrifugal compressor diffusers with a time-marching scheme. A thin-layer approximation is introduced into the time-dependent Navier-Stokes equations and the turbulent quantities are provided by a zero-equation eddy-viscosity model due to Baldwin and Lomax. For solving the governing equations an explicit-implicit MacCormack scheme is applied. The effect of the side wall boundary layer can be employed globally by variable stream sheet thickness. The present code has been verified by comparison of calculated and measured data. Pressure and velocity fields as well as global results like diffuser efficiency have been considered. The code is very efficient at a CRAY-XMP vector computer. Hence, two-dimensional and quasi-three-dimensional turbulent flow fields can be obtained with a reasonable effort. However, one has to be very careful concerning the modelling of the effect of the side-wall boundary layer by variable stream sheet thickness.