An Investigation of the Effect of Cascade Area Ratios on Transonic Compressor Performance

Author(s):  
A. R. Wadia ◽  
W. W. Copenhaver

Transonic compressor rotor performance is highly sensitive to variations in cascade area ratios. This paper reports on the design, experimental evaluation and three-dimensional viscous analysis of four low aspect ratio transonic rotors that demonstrate the effects of cascade throat area, internal contraction and trailing edge effective camber on compressor performance. The cascade throat area study revealed that tight throat margins result in increased high speed efficiency with lower part speed performance. Stall line was also improved slightly over a wide range of speeds with a lower throat-to-upstream capture area ratio. Higher internal contraction, expressed as throat-to-mouth area ratio, also results in increased design point peak efficiency, but again costs performance at the lower speeds. Reducing the trailing edge effective camber expressed as throat-to-exit area ratio, results in an improvement in peak efficiency level without significantly lowering the stall line. Among all four rotors, the best high speed efficiency was obtained by the rotor with tight throat margin and highest internal contraction, but its efficiency was the lowest at part speed. The best compromise between high speed and part speed efficiency was achieved by the rotor with a large throat and a lower trailing edge effective camber. The differences in the shock structure and the shock boundary layer interaction of the four blades was analyzed using a three-dimensional viscous code. The analytical results are used to supplement the data and provide further insight into the detailed physics of the flow field.

1996 ◽  
Vol 118 (4) ◽  
pp. 760-770 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. R. Wadia ◽  
W. W. Copenhaver

Transonic compressor rotor performance is highly sensitive to variations in cascade area ratios. This paper reports on the design, experimental evaluation, and three-dimensional viscous analysis of four low-aspect-ratio transonic rotors that demonstrate the effects of cascade throat area, internal contraction, and trailing edge effective camber on compressor performance. The cascade throat area study revealed that tight throat margins result in increased high-speed efficiency with lower part-speed performance. Stall line was also improved slightly over a wide range of speeds with a lower throat-to-upstream capture area ratio. Higher internal contraction, expressed as throat-to-mouth area ratio, also results in increased design point peak efficiency, but again costs performance at the lower speeds. Reducing the trailing edge effective camber, expressed as throat-to-exit area ratio, results in an improvement in peak efficiency level without significantly lowering the stall line. Among all four rotors, the best high-speed efficiency was obtained by the rotor with a tight throat margin and highest internal contraction, but its efficiency was the lowest at part speed. The best compromise between high-speed and part-speed efficiency was achieved by the rotor with a large throat and a lower trailing edge effective camber. The difference in the shock structure and the shock boundary layer interaction of the four blade was analyzed using a three-dimensional viscous code. The analytical results are used to supplement the data and provide further insight into the detailed physics of the flow field.


1993 ◽  
Vol 115 (2) ◽  
pp. 283-295 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. N. Dawes

This paper describes recent developments to a three-dimensional, unstructured mesh, solution-adaptive Navier–Stokes solver. By adopting a simple, pragmatic but systematic approach to mesh generation, the range of simulations that can be attempted is extended toward arbitrary geometries. The combined benefits of the approach result in a powerful analytical ability. Solutions for a wide range of flows are presented, including a transonic compressor rotor, a centrifugal impeller, a steam turbine nozzle guide vane with casing extraction belt, the internal coolant passage of a radial inflow turbine, and a turbine disk cavity flow.


Author(s):  
Lanxin Sun ◽  
Qun Zheng ◽  
Mingcong Luo ◽  
Yijin Li ◽  
Rakesh Bhargava

The process of wet compression in an axial compressor is an intricate two-phase flow involving not only heat and mass transfer processes but also droplet breakup and even formation of discontinuous water film on the blade surface and then breaking into droplets. The implementation of practical boundary conditions for water droplets on the blade surface is the key to the proper numerical simulation of the wet compression process. In this paper, the droplets-wall interactions are analyzed using the theory of spray wall impingement through two computational models for an isolated transonic compressor rotor (NASA rotor 37). The Model #1, representing spread phenomenon, assumes that all droplets impacting on the blade are trapped in the water film and subsequently released from its trailing edge and enter the wake region with an equivalent mass flow but bigger in diameter and smaller in number. Whereas, the Model #2, representing splashing phenomenon, assumes that upon impacting on the blade, the droplets will breakup into many smaller ones. The three-dimensional flow simulation results of these two models are analyzed and compared in this paper. The trajectory of droplets for the spread phenomenon clearly showed formation of larger size droplets on the rotor blade’s suction surface near its trailing edge which broke-up into larger number of smaller size droplets. Whereas, in the case of splashing, droplets breakup into many smaller size droplets upon impacting on the blades. The three-dimensional flow field, examined through Mach number and temperature contours, showed that the evaporation was much larger around the blade’s tip region indicated by a larger temperature reduction. The examination of limiting streamlines clearly showed that the wet compression moved shockwave towards blade’s tip region and separation region and vortex region became weaker for a given amount of water injection and for both droplets-wall interaction models. For a given amount of injection flow and downstream of the separation line, the extent of flow reversal region in the spanwise direction and near the blade’s trailing edge are influenced by the type of droplet-wall interaction. Also, the extent of flow reversal region in the spanwise direction reduces with the decrease in the injected droplets size.


Author(s):  
B. H. Beheshti ◽  
B Farhanieh ◽  
K Ghorbanian ◽  
J. A. Teixeira ◽  
P. C. Ivey

The casing treatment and flow injection upstream of the rotor tip are two effective approaches in suppressing instabilities or recovering from a fully developed stall. This paper presents numerical simulations for a high-speed transonic compressor rotor, NASA Rotor 37, applying a state-of-the-art design for the blade tip injection. This is characterized by introducing a jet flow directly into the casing treatment machined into the shroud. The casing treatment is positioned over the blade tip region and exceeds the impeller axially by ∼30 per cent of the tip chord both in the upstream and in the downstream directions. To numerically solve the governing equations, the three-dimensional finite element based finite volume method CFD solver CFX-TASCflow (version 2.12.1) is employed. For a compressible flow with varying density, Reynolds-averaging leads to appearance of complicated correlations. To avoid this, the mass-weighted or Favre-averaging is applied. Using an injected mass flow of 2.4 per cent of the annulus flow, the present design can improve stall margin by up to 7 per cent when compared with a smooth casing compressor without tip injection. This research can lead to an optimum design of recirculating casing treatments or other mechanisms for performance enhancement applying tip flow injection.


Author(s):  
Stephane Baralon ◽  
Lars-Erik Eriksson ◽  
Ulf Håll

Two three-dimensional Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes solutions of the Nasa 67 transonic compressor rotor with tip clearance, computed at near-peak efficiency and near-stall flow conditions, have been circumferentially averaged in order to evaluate the circumferential spatial fluctuation terms such as u′u′, u′v′, u′w′, etc. The three-dimensional distribution of these fluctuations is presented and physically interpreted for the two flow conditions. Then, the meridional distributions of the tangential average of each of these fluctuation terms, the so-called perturbation stresses, are described and interpreted for the two flow conditions. A meridional throughflow computation for which all stresses were included has been performed for the near-peak efficiency flow condition using a time-marching finite-volume solver. The calculation proved to be in good agreement with the tangentially averaged 3D solution. Moreover, the relative importance of the perturbation and viscous stresses has been investigated. The influence of the viscous stresses on the meridional flow was not found important whereas the perturbation stresses were identified as significant contributors to the blade passage losses and to the spanwise mixing phenomenon. Furthermore, the relative effects of each perturbation term on the meridional flow prediction have been investigated for the near-peak efficiency case. The u′w′~, v′w′~, u′v′~ and u′u′~ stresses proved to exert a significant influence on the prediction of blade design key parameters such as flow angles and losses in the tip region, essentially.


Author(s):  
W. N. Dawes

This paper describes recent developments to a three dimensional, unstructured mesh, solution-adaptive Navier-Stokes solver. By adopting a simple, pragmatic but systematic approach to mesh generation, the range of simulations which can be attempted is extended towards arbitrary geometries. The combined benefits of the approach result in a powerful analytical ability. Solutions for a wide range of flows are presented including a transonic compressor rotor, a centrifugal impellor, a steam turbine nozzle guide vane with casing extraction belt, the internal coolant passage of a radial inflow turbine and a turbine disc-cavity flow.


Author(s):  
ZX Liu ◽  
HZ Diao ◽  
XC Zhu ◽  
ZH Du

In this paper, a three-dimensional body force model for predicting compressor performance and stability is implemented in the Ansys CFX. The influence of the blade rows on the flow field is represented by the source terms of CFX-solver equation. At first, a high-speed and high-pressure-ratio transonic compressor with the clean inlet is investigated. The overall performance and the flow fields are in agreement well with those of the experimental date, so the model is reliable and correct. Then, the effects of the circumferential distortions in the inlet total pressure and the total temperature on the compressor performance and flow field are also illustrated, respectively. In summary, the proposed body force model is suitable to investigate the flow field of the compressor with the inlet distortions.


Author(s):  
June Chung ◽  
Ki D. Lee

A design method for transonic compressor rotor blades is developed based on Navier-Stokes physics. The method is applied to optimize the blade sections at several span stations, and new three-dimensional blades are constructed by interpolating the geometry of the designed blade sections. The method is demonstrated with NASA Rotor 37, producing new rotor blades with improved adiabatic efficiency over a wide range of operating conditions. The results indicate that the developed design process can find improved designs at an affordable computational cost.


Author(s):  
A. J. Gannon ◽  
G. V. Hobson ◽  
R. P. Shreeve ◽  
I. J. Villescas

High-speed pressure measurements of a transonic compressor rotor-stator stage and rotor-only configuration during stall and surge are presented. Rotational speed data showed the difference between the rotor-only case and rotor-stator stage. The rotor-only case stalled and remained stalled until the control throttle was opened. In the rotor-stator stage the compressor surged entering a cyclical stalling and then un-stalling pattern. An array of pressure probes was mounted in the case wall over the rotor for both configurations of the machine. The fast response probes were sampled at 196 608 Hz as the rotor was driven into stall. Inspection of the raw data signal allowed the size and speed of the stall cell during its growth to be investigated. Post-processing of the simultaneous signals of the casing pressure showed the development of the stall cell from the point of inception and allowed the structure of the stall cell to be viewed.


Author(s):  
Chunill Hah ◽  
Douglas C. Rabe ◽  
Thomas J. Sullivan ◽  
Aspi R. Wadia

The effects of circumferential distortions in inlet total pressure on the flow field in a low-aspect-ratio, high-speed, high-pressure-ratio, transonic compressor rotor are investigated in this paper. The flow field was studied experimentally and numerically with and without inlet total pressure distortion. Total pressure distortion was created by screens mounted upstream from the rotor inlet. Circumferential distortions of 8 periods per revolution were investigated at two different rotor speeds. The unsteady blade surface pressures were measured with miniature pressure transducers mounted in the blade. The flow fields with and without inlet total pressure distortion were analyzed numerically by solving steady and unsteady forms of the Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations. Steady three-dimensional viscous flow calculations were performed for the flow without inlet distortion while unsteady three-dimensional viscous flow calculations were used for the flow with inlet distortion. For the time-accurate calculation, circumferential and radial variations of the inlet total pressure were used as a time-dependent inflow boundary condition. A second-order implicit scheme was used for the time integration. The experimental measurements and the numerical analysis are highly complementary for this study because of the extreme complexity of the flow field. The current investigation shows that inlet flow distortions travel through the rotor blade passage and are convected into the following stator. At a high rotor speed where the flow is transonic, the passage shock was found to oscillate by as much as 20% of the blade chord, and very strong interactions between the unsteady passage shock and the blade boundary layer were observed. This interaction increases the effective blockage of the passage, resulting in an increased aerodynamic loss and a reduced stall margin. The strong interaction between the passage shock and the blade boundary layer increases the peak aerodynamic loss by about one percent.


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