Influence of Local Surface Roughness of Rotor Blade on Performance of an Axial Compressor Stage

Author(s):  
Shaowen Chen ◽  
Shijun Sun ◽  
Hao Xu ◽  
Longxin Zhang ◽  
Songtao Wang ◽  
...  

The influence of local surface roughness of rotor blades on the performance of axial compressor stages were investigated through numerical simulation with local surface roughness added on the suction and pressure surfaces of rotor blades of realistic compressor stage NASA Stage35. First of all, the reliability of a commercial computational fluid dynamic code was validated and the computed performance maps showed a good agreement with experimental data from literatures. Numerical results indicated that the increase in surface roughness in most of the local positions may cause the deterioration of compressor stage performance. The amplitude of decrease in compressor performance due to the addition of surface roughness in outer and inner portions of the span and the area near the leading edge of the rotor blades would be much greater than that in the region near the trailing edge. The roughness added to the pressure surface near the leading edge had less impact on the stage characteristics, including the mass flow rate at the choked point. Thus the compressor characteristic got close to that under normal conditions and showed a wider stable operating range. The mass flow in the choked region and the adiabatic efficiency were less affected by the roughness added to the region near the trailing edge of pressure surface from rotor blades. However, this scheme mentioned before would increase the total pressure ratio to some extent, with the adverse effect of adding roughness on the corresponding suction surface.

2014 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 307-313 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Taghavi-Zenou ◽  
S. Abbasi ◽  
S. Eslami

ABSTRACTThis paper deals with tip leakage flow structure in subsonic axial compressor rotor blades row under different operating conditions. Analyses are based on flow simulation utilizing computational fluid dynamic technique. Three different circumstances at near stall condition are considered in this respect. Tip leakage flow frequency spectrum was studied through surveying instantaneous static pressure signals imposed on blades surfaces. Results at the highest flow rate, close to the stall condition, showed that the tip vortex flow fluctuates with a frequency close to the blade passing frequency. In addition, pressure signals remained unchanged with time. Moreover, equal pressure fluctuations at different passages guaranteed no peripheral disturbances. Tip leakage flow frequency decreased with reduction of the mass flow rate and its structure was changing with time. Spillage of the tip leakage flow from the blade leading edge occurred without any backflow in the trailing edge region. Consequently, various flow structures were observed within every passage between two adjacent blades. Further decrease in the mass flow rate provided conditions where the spilled flow ahead of the blade leading edge together with trailing edge backflow caused spike stall to occur. This latter phenomenon was accompanied by lower frequencies and higher amplitudes of the pressure signals. Further revolution of the rotor blade row caused the spike stall to eventuate to larger stall cells, which may be led to fully developed rotating stall.


2013 ◽  
Vol 136 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicola Aldi ◽  
Mirko Morini ◽  
Michele Pinelli ◽  
Pier Ruggero Spina ◽  
Alessio Suman ◽  
...  

In this paper, three-dimensional numerical simulations are carried out to evaluate the effect of fouling on an axial compressor stage. A numerical model of the NASA Stage 37, validated in previous papers of the same authors against experimental data available from literature, is used as a case study. The occurrence of fouling is simulated by imposing different spanwise distributions of surface roughness, in order to analyze its effect on compressor performance. To this aim, both the stage performance maps of the fouled compressor and the spanwise distribution of work and losses are analyzed and discussed. Moreover, the definition of an averaged roughness parameter is suggested, to characterize the different roughness distributions.The results show that the drop of overall performance can actually be predicted by means of the numerical model. Moreover, detailed information about fluid-dynamic phenomena can be analyzed on the basis of the actual distribution of surface roughness on rotor blades.


Author(s):  
Nicola Aldi ◽  
Mirko Morini ◽  
Michele Pinelli ◽  
Pier Ruggero Spina ◽  
Alessio Suman ◽  
...  

In this paper, three-dimensional numerical simulations are carried out to evaluate the effect of fouling on an axial compressor stage. A numerical model of the NASA Stage 37, validated in previous papers of the same authors against experimental data available from literature, is used as a case study. The occurrence of fouling is simulated by imposing different spanwise distributions of surface roughness, in order to analyze its effect on compressor performance. To this aim, both the stage performance maps of the fouled compressor and the spanwise distribution of work and losses are analyzed and discussed. Moreover, the definition of an averaged roughness parameter is suggested, to characterize the different roughness distributions. The results show that the drop of overall performance can actually be predicted by means of the numerical model. Moreover, detailed information about fluid-dynamic phenomena can be analyzed on the basis of the actual distribution of surface roughness on rotor blades.


Author(s):  
Shaowen Chen ◽  
Chen Zhang ◽  
Hui Shi ◽  
Songtao Wang ◽  
Zhongqi Wang

Mechanistic research on the fouling of the compressor is necessary to delay the deterioration caused by fouling during long-term operation, and to explore methods that will lower compressor component deterioration, thereby improving the overall performance. The effects of fouling on the performance of an axial compressor stage were investigated numerically. As a representative of the realistic compressor stages, the NASA Stage 35 was considered to perform a numerical investigation by means of a commercial computational fluid dynamic code. The numerical model was validated by comparing with the experimental data available from literatures. The computed performance maps and exit parameter distributions showed a good agreement with experimental data. The model was then used to simulate the effect of fouling on compressor stage by various fouling configurations including added thickness and surface roughness levels. The mechanism of the compressor deterioration due to fouling was discussed in detail. As a result, despite the contribution of added thickness on the work capacity, it substantially narrowed the table operating ranges substantially, causing a greater effect on the overall compressor performance. The influence of roughness applied in the rotor is similar to that in the whole stage, including the drop in mass flow rate at choked and near stall point, pressure ratio, and efficiency, whereas, compressor performance slightly decreases in the stator. When the surface roughness is equal to 50 μm, the drop in mass flow rate under a low Reynolds number is less than that under normal conditions, with little influence on the stable operating range.


Author(s):  
Marcus Lejon ◽  
Niklas Andersson ◽  
Tomas Grönstedt ◽  
Lars Ellbrant ◽  
Hans Mårtensson

Surface degradation in an axial compressor during its lifetime can have a considerable adverse effect on its performance. The present study investigates how the optimized design of compressor blades in a single compressor stage is affected by considering a high level of surface roughness on a level representative of a long period of in-service use. It is shown that including surface roughness in the optimization process is of relatively little importance, however, matching of compressor stages is shown to require consideration as the rotational speed must be increased to reach the design point as surface quality decrease. An increased surface roughness in itself is shown to have a large effect on performance. Two optimization approaches are compared. The first approach considers the compressor blades to be hydraulically smooth. The designs obtained from this approach are subsequently degraded by increasing the level of surface roughness. The compressor blades from the first approach are compared to designs obtained from a second optimization approach, which considers a high level of surface roughness from the outset. The degraded compressor stages from the first approach are shown to be among the best performing designs in terms of polytropic efficiency and stability when compared to designs obtained with the second approach.


2013 ◽  
Vol 787 ◽  
pp. 594-599 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bao Long Gong ◽  
Xiu Jie Jia ◽  
Guang Cun Wang ◽  
Zi Wu Liu

CAE technology is the most common method to study properties of impeller in a centrifugal compressor. The fluid field was numerically simulated by CFX program to obtain the distribution rules of pressure, turbulence intensity and erosion wear. Based on fluid-solid interaction, stress and deformation were analyzed by Ansys program. According to the simulation results, the maximum deformation and equivalent stress of the impeller are all located on the junction between the blade trailing edge and the shroud. The most serious damaged part by erosion wear in impeller is on the pressure surface of long blade. The erosion wear area on blade pressure surface caused by particles impact primarily locates on blade trailing edge root and middle part. In the flow field, the turbulent intensity on suction surface is greater than that on pressure surface in the corresponding position and the greatest turbulent intensity is located on the leading edge of suction surface. There is backflow phenomenon around the suction surface of long blade and the short blade has significant effect to reduce backflow. The results of numerical simulation explain some actual impeller failure cases and can be applied to anti-wear impeller design and repair.


Author(s):  
Zhiqiang Yu ◽  
Jianjun Liu ◽  
Chen Li ◽  
Baitao An

Abstract Numerical investigations have been performed to study the effect of incidence angle on the aerodynamic and film cooling performance for the suction surface squealer tip with different film-hole arrangements at τ = 1.5% and BR = 1.0. Meanwhile, the full squealer tip as baseline is also investigated. Three incidence angles at design condition (0 deg) and off-design conditions (± 7 deg) are investigated. The suction surface, pressure surface, and the camber line have seven holes each, with an extra hole right at the leading edge. The Mach number at the cascade inlet and outlet are 0.24 and 0.52, respectively. The results show that the incidence angle has a significant effect on the tip leakage flow characteristics and coolant flow direction. The film cooling effectiveness distribution is altered, especially for the film holes near the leading edge. When the incidence angle changes from +7 deg to 0 and −7 deg, the ‘re-attachment line’ moves downstream and the total tip leakage mass flow ratio decreases, but the suction surface tip leakage mass flow ratio near leading edge increases. In general, the total tip leakage mass flow ratio for suction surface squealer tip is 1% greater than that for full squealer tip at the same incidence angle. The total pressure loss coefficient of suction surface squealer tip is larger than that for full squealer tip. The full squealer tip with film holes near suction surface and the suction surface squealer tip with film hole along camber line show high film cooling performance, and the area averaged film cooling effectiveness at positive incidence angle +7 deg is higher than that at 0 and −7 deg. The coolant discharged from film holes near pressure surface only cools narrow region near pressure surface.


Author(s):  
Hongwei Ma ◽  
Jun Zhang

The purpose of this paper is to investigate numerically the effects of the tip geometry on the performance of an axial compressor rotor. There are three case studies which are compared with the base line tip geometry. 1) baseline (flat tip); 2) Cavity (tip with a cavity); 3) SSQA (suction side squealer tip) and 4) SSQB (modified suction side squealer tip). The case of SSQB is a combination of suction side squealer tip and the cavity tip. From leading edge to 10% chord, the tip has a cavity. From 10% chord to trailing edge, the tip has a suction side squealer. The numerical results of 2) show that the cavity tip leads to lower leakage mass flow and greater loss in tip gap and the rotor passage. The loading near the blade tip is lower than the baseline, thus the tangential force of the blade is lower. It leads to lower pressure rise than the baseline. The performance of the compressor for the tip with cavity is worse than the baseline. The results of 3) show that the higher curvature of the suction side squealer increases the loading of the blade and the tangential blade force. With the suction side squealer tip, the leakage flow experiences two vena contractor thus the mass of the leakage flow is reduced which is benefit for the performance of the compressor. The loss in the tip gap is lower than baseline. The performance is better than the baseline with greater pressure rise of the rotor, smaller leakage mass flow and lower averaged loss. For the case the SSQB, the leakage mass flow is lower than the SSQA and the loss in the tip gap and the rotor passage is greater than SSQA. The performance of the case of the SSQB is worse than the case of SSQA.


2018 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 527-543 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cong Wang ◽  
Yongxue Zhang ◽  
Zhiwei Li ◽  
Ao Xu ◽  
Chang Xu ◽  
...  

To provide a comprehensive understanding of the pressure fluctuation–vortex interaction in non-cavitation and cavitation flow, in this article, the unsteady flow in an ultra-low specific-speed centrifugal pump was investigated by numerical simulation. The uncertainty of the numerical framework with three sets of successively refined mesh was verified and validated by a level of 1% of the experimental results. Then, the unsteady results indicate that the features of the internal flow and the pressure fluctuation were accurately captured in accordance with the closed-loop experimental results. The detailed pressure fluctuation at 16 monitoring points and the monitoring of the vorticity suggest that some inconsistent transient phenomena in frequency spectrums show strong correlation with the evolution of vortex, such as abnormal increasing amplitudes at the monitoring points near to the leading edge on the suction surface and the trailing edge on the pressure surface in the case of lower pressurization capacity of impeller after cavitation. Further analysis applies the relative vortex transport equation to intuitionally illustrate the pressure fluctuation–vortex interaction by the contribution of baroclinic torque, viscous diffusion and vortex convection terms. It reveals that the effect of viscous diffusion is weak when the Reynolds number is much greater than 1. Pressure fluctuation amplitude enlarges on the suction side of blade near to the leading edge due to the baroclinic torque in cavitation regions, whereas the abnormal increase of pressure fluctuation after cavitation on the pressure surface of blade approaching the trailing edge results from the vortex convection during vortices moving downstream with the decrease of available net positive suction head at the same instance.


Fluids ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 88
Author(s):  
Motoyuki Kawase ◽  
Aldo Rona

A proof of concept is provided by computational fluid dynamic simulations of a new recirculating type casing treatment. This treatment aims at extending the stable operating range of highly loaded axial compressors, so to improve the safety of sorties of high-speed, high-performance aircraft powered by high specific thrust engines. This casing treatment, featuring an axisymmetric recirculation channel, is evaluated on the NASA rotor 37 test case by steady and unsteady Reynolds Averaged Navier Stokes (RANS) simulations, using the realizable k-ε model. Flow blockage at the recirculation channel outlet was mitigated by chamfering the exit of the recirculation channel inner wall. The channel axial location from the rotor blade tip leading edge was optimized parametrically over the range −4.6% to 47.6% of the rotor tip axial chord c z . Locating the channel at 18.2% c z provided the best stall margin gain of approximately 5.5% compared to the untreated rotor. No rotor adiabatic efficiency was lost by the application of this casing treatment. The investigation into the flow structure with the recirculating channel gave a good insight into how the new casing treatment generates this benefit. The combination of stall margin gain at no rotor adiabatic efficiency loss makes this design attractive for applications to high-speed gas turbine engines.


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