Vortical Flow Structure of Hub-Corner Separation in a Stator Cascade of a Multi-Stage Transonic Axial Compressor

Author(s):  
Seishiro Saito ◽  
Masato Furukawa ◽  
Kazutoyo Yamada ◽  
Yuki Tamura ◽  
Akinori Matsuoka ◽  
...  

In this study, the hub-corner separation in a multi-stage transonic axial compressor has been investigated using a large-scale detached eddy simulation (DES) with about 4.5 hundred million computational cells. The complicated flow field near the hub wall in a stator with partial tip clearances was analyzed by data mining techniques extracting important flow phenomena from the DES results. The data mining techniques applied in the present study include vortex identification based on the critical point theory and topological data analysis of the limiting streamline pattern visualized by the line integral convolution (LIC) method. It is found from the time-averaged flow field in the first stator that the hub-corner separation vortex formed near the solid part of the stator tip interacts with the leakage flow and secondary flow on the hub wall, resulting in a complicated vortical flow field. Near the leading edge of the stator, the leakage flow from the front partial clearance generates the tip leakage vortex, which produces loss from the leading edge to 10 percent chord position. At the mid-chord, the hub-corner separation vortex suffers a breakdown, resulting in the widespread huge loss production. It is shown from limiting streamlines on the suction surface of the stator that a reverse flow region expands radially from the solid part of the stator tip toward the downstream. From 50 percent chord position to the trailing edge of the stator, the leakage flow through the rear partial clearance interacts with the secondary flow on the hub wall. The leakage vortex generated along the rear partial clearance becomes a major loss factor there.

Author(s):  
Seishiro Saito ◽  
Kazutoyo Yamada ◽  
Masato Furukawa ◽  
Keisuke Watanabe ◽  
Akinori Matsuoka ◽  
...  

This paper describes unsteady flow phenomena of a two-stage transonic axial compressor, especially the flow field in the first stator. The stator blade with highly loaded is likely to cause a flow separation on the hub, so-called hub-corner separation. The flow mechanism of the hub-corner separation in the first stator is investigated in detail using a large-scale detached eddy simulation (DES) conducted for its full-annulus and full-stage with approximately 4.5 hundred million computational cells. The detailed analysis of complicated flow fields in the compressor is supported by data mining techniques. The data mining techniques applied in the present study include vortex identification based on the critical point theory and topological analysis of the limiting streamline pattern. The simulation results show that the flow field in the hub-corner separation is dominated by a tornado-type separation vortex. In the time averaged flow field, the hub-corner separation vortex rolls up from the hub wall, which is generated by the interaction between the mainstream flow, the leakage flow from the front partial clearance and the secondary flow across the blade passage toward the stator blade suction side. The hub-corner separation vortex suffers a vortex breakdown near the mid chord, where the high loss region due to the hub-corner separation expands drastically. In the rear part of the stator passage, a high loss region is migrated radially outward by the induced velocity of the hub-corner separation vortex. The flow field in the stator is influenced by the upstream and downstream rotors, which makes it difficult to understand the unsteady effects. The unsteady flow fields are analyzed by applying the phase-locked ensemble averaging technique. It is found from the phase-locked flow fields that the wake interaction from the upstream rotor has more influence on the stator flow field than the shock wave interaction from the downstream rotor. In the unsteady flow field, a focal-type separation also emerges on the blade suction surface, but it is periodically swept away by the wake passing of the upstream rotor. The separation vortex on the hub wall connects with the one on the blade suction surface, forming an arch-like vortex.


Author(s):  
Xavier Ottavy ◽  
Isabelle Trébinjac ◽  
André Vouillarmet

An analysis of the experimental data, obtained by laser two-focus anemometry in the IGV-rotor inter-row region of a transonic axial compressor, is presented with the aim of improving the understanding of the unsteady flow phenomena. A study of the IGV wakes and of the shock waves emanating from the leading edge of the rotor blades is proposed. Their interaction reveals the increase in magnitude of the wake passing through the moving shock. This result is highlighted by the streamwise evolution of the wake vorticity. Moreover, the results are analyzed in terms of a time averaging procedure and the purely time-dependent velocity fluctuations which occur are quantified. It may be concluded that they are of the same order of magnitude as the spatial terms for the inlet rotor flow field. That shows that the temporal fluctuations should be considered for the 3D rotor time-averaged simulations.


2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bin Jiang ◽  
Xiangtong Shi ◽  
Qun Zheng ◽  
Qingfang Zhu ◽  
Zhongliang Chen ◽  
...  

AbstractThe onset of spike stall induced by the interaction of hub corner separation flow with the tip leakage flow is investigated in detail by numerical method in this paper. The time resolved results indicate that the remarkable radial secondary flow from hub to tip near the trailing edge is formed when the compressor approaching rotating stall. The radial secondary flow is unstable and cross-passages propagates, which flows in and away out of the tip region periodically. The disturbance caused by radial secondary flow will influence the tip leakage flow directly by reforming the vortexes in blade tip region. A secondary vortex which comes from the radial migration of corner separation and is induced by the tip leakage vortex appears in the tip region. The simulation result demonstrates that the generation of the secondary vortex is an important symbol of blockage growth in the tip region at the stall inception phase. The disturbance produced by secondary vortex is an incentive of the leading edge overflow and the intensity of secondary vortex could be used as a criterion of rotating stall before leading edge spillage.


Author(s):  
Seishiro Saito ◽  
Masato Furukawa ◽  
Kazutoyo Yamada ◽  
Keisuke Watanabe ◽  
Akinori Matsuoka ◽  
...  

Abstract Flow structure and flow loss generation in a transonic axial compressor has been numerically investigated by using a large-scale detached eddy simulation (DES). The data mining techniques, which include a vortex identification based on the critical point theory and a limiting streamline visualization with the line integral convolution (LIC) method, were applied to the DES result in order to analyze the complicated flow field in compressor. The flow loss in unsteady flow field was evaluated by entropy production rate, and the loss mechanism and the loss amount of each flow phenomenon were investigated for the first rotor and the first stator. In the first rotor, a shock-induced separation is caused by the detached shock wave and the passage shock wave. On the hub side, a hub-corner separation occurs due to the secondary flow on the hub surface, and a hub-corner separation vortex is clearly formed. The flow loss is mainly caused by the blade boundary layer and wake, and the loss due to the shock wave is very small, only about 1 percent of the total loss amount in the first rotor. However, the shock/boundary layer interaction causes an additional loss in the blade boundary layer and the wake, which amount reaches to about 30 percent of the total. In the first stator, the hub-corner separation occurs on the suction side. Although only one hub-corner separation vortex is formed in the averaged flow field, the hub-corner separation vortex is generated in multiple pieces and those pieces interfere with each other in an instantaneous flow field. The hub-corner separation generates huge loss over a wide range, however, the loss generation around the hub-corner separation vortex is not so large, and the flow loss is mainly produced in the shear layer between the mainstream region and the separation region. The main factors of loss generation are the boundary layer, wake and hub-corner separation, which account for about 80 percent of the total loss amount in the first stator.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 (0) ◽  
pp. J0550201
Author(s):  
Seishiro SAITO ◽  
Masato FURUKAWA ◽  
Kazutoyo YAMADA ◽  
Keisuke WATANABE ◽  
Akinori MATSUOKA ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Mahmoud L. Mansour ◽  
John Gunaraj ◽  
Shraman Goswami

This paper summarizes the results of a validation and calibration study for two modern Computational Fluid Dynamics programs that are capable of modeling multistage axial compressors in a multi-blade row environment. The validation test case is a modern 4-stage high pressure ratio axial compressor designed and tested by Honeywell Aerospace in the late 90’s. The two CFD programs employ two different techniques for simulating the steady three-dimensional viscous flow field in a multistage/multiblade row turbo-machine. The first code, APNASA, was developed by NASA Glenn Research Center “GRC” and applies the approach by Adamczyk [1] for solving the average-passage equations which is a time and passage-averaged version of the Reynolds Averaged Navier Stokes (RANS) equations. The second CFD code is commercially marketed by ANSYS-CFX and applies a much simpler approach, known as the mixing-plane model, for combining the relative and the stationary frames of reference in a single steady 3D viscous simulation. Results from the two CFD programs are compared against the tested compressor’s overall performance data and against measured flow profiles at the leading edge of the fourth stator. The paper also presents a turbulence modeling sensitivity study aimed at documenting the sensitivity of the prediction of the flow field of such compressors to use of different turbulence closures such as the standard K-ε model, the Wilcox K-ω model and the Shear-Stress-Transport K-ω/SST turbulence model. The paper also presents results that demonstrate the CFD prediction sensitivity to modeling the compressor’s hub leakages from the inner-banded stator cavities. Comparison to the test data, using the K-ε turbulence closure, show that APNASA provides better accuracy in predicting the absolute levels of the performance characteristics. The presented results also show that better predictions by CFX can be obtained using the K-ω and the SST turbulence models. Modeling of the hub leakage flow was found to have significant and more than expected impact on the compressor predicted overall performance. The authors recommend further validation and evaluation for the modeling of the hub leakage flow to ensure realistic predictions for turbo-machinery performance.


2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 (0) ◽  
pp. 0913
Author(s):  
Seishiro SAITO ◽  
Yuki TAMURA ◽  
Masato FURUKAWA ◽  
Kazutoyo YAMADA ◽  
Akinori MATUOKA ◽  
...  

2000 ◽  
Vol 123 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xavier Ottavy ◽  
Isabelle Tre´binjac ◽  
Andre´ Vouillarmet

An analysis of the experimental data, obtained by laser two-focus anemometry in the IGV-rotor interrow region of a transonic axial compressor, is presented with the aim of improving the understanding of the unsteady flow phenomena. A study of the IGV wakes and of the shock waves emanating from the leading edge of the rotor blades is proposed. Their interaction reveals the increase in magnitude of the wake passing through the moving shock. This result is highlighted by the streamwise evolution of the wake vorticity. Moreover, the results are analyzed in terms of a time-averaging procedure and the purely time-dependent velocity fluctuations that occur are quantified. It may be concluded that they are of the same order of magnitude as the spatial terms for the inlet rotor flow field. That shows that the temporal fluctuations should be considered for the three-dimensional rotor time-averaged simulations.


Author(s):  
Botao Zhang ◽  
Bo Liu ◽  
Xiaochen Mao ◽  
Xiaoxiong Wu ◽  
Hejian Wang

To deeply understand the hub leakage flow and its influence on the aerodynamic performance and flow behaviors of a small-scale transonic axial compressor, variations of the performance and the flow field of the compressor with different hub clearance sizes and clearance shapes were numerically analyzed. The results indicate that the hub clearance size has remarkable impacts on the overall performance of the compressor. With the increase of the hub clearance, the intensity of the hub leakage flow increases, resulting in more intense flow blockage near the stator hub, which reduces the compressor efficiency. However, the flow field near the blade mid-span is modified due to the more convergent flow as the reduced effective flow area caused by the passage blockage, and the flow separation range is narrowed, thus the flow stability of the compressor is enhanced. On this basis, two kinds of non-uniform clearance cases of expanding clearance and shrinking clearance with the same circumferential leakage area as the design clearance were investigated. The occurrence position of the double leakage flow which is closely connected with the flow loss and blockage is shifted backward by the expanding clearance, the flow capacity near the stator hub is enhanced, and the unsteady fluctuation intensity of the flow field is attenuated but fluctuation frequency remains. Similarly, the modification of the stator blade root flow field may result in the reduction of stall margin. The effect of the shrinking clearance on compressor performance is opposite to that of the expanding clearance, which reduces the peak efficiency and delays the stall inception.


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