Effects of Rotating Inlet Distortion on Two-Stage Compressor Stability With Stall Precursor-Suppressed Casing Treatment

Author(s):  
Dakun Sun ◽  
Jia Li ◽  
Xu Dong ◽  
Benhao Gu ◽  
Xiaofeng Sun

Experimental research about rotating inlet distortion is carried out on a two-stage compressor with emphasis on the compressor stability as well as the stall margin improvement with a kind of stall precursor-suppressed (SPS) casing treatment in this paper. The wire mesh screen is placed at the upstream of the IGV and can rotate at various speeds in co- and counter-direction of the compressor rotor to simulate the rotating inlet distortion in different levels. The results show that the rotating inlet distortion can deteriorate the compressor stall margin and the SPS casing treatment can extend the compressor stall margin (1.95%–7.90%) without additional efficiency loss. The pre-stall behavior of compressor is also analyzed to uncover the mechanism of the stall margin improvement with such casing treatment. Results show that casing treatment of this configuration can weaken the unsteady disturbances in compression system.

2015 ◽  
Vol 137 (11) ◽  
Author(s):  
Xu Dong ◽  
Dakun Sun ◽  
Fanyu Li ◽  
Donghai Jin ◽  
Xingmin Gui ◽  
...  

This paper conducts an experimental research of rotating inlet distortion on a low-speed large size test compressor with emphasis on the stability problem of axial fan/compressors, and the stall margin enhancement with a kind of stall precursor-suppressed (SPS) casing treatment. Some results on compressor stall margin and prestall behavior under the restriction of rotating inlet distortion are presented. The experimental results show that whether the inlet distortion is co-rotating or counter-rotating, the SPS casing treatment can still improve the stall margin without leading to additional efficiency loss caused by such configuration. The experiment results also show that the mechanism of the stall margin improvement with such casing treatment is associated with delaying the nonlinear development of the stall precursor waves and weakening the unsteady flow disturbances in a compression system.


Author(s):  
M. Ziabasharhagh ◽  
A. B. McKenzie ◽  
R. L. Elder

An experimental investigation has been carried out on the influence of a vaned recessed casing treatment on the stall margin improvement of axial flow fans with different hub to tip ratio, with and without inlet distortion. The inlet distortion tests were conducted on a 0.5 hub to tip ratio fan and significant increases in the flow range with only small drops in operating efficiency were observed. The clean flow tests were conducted on higher hub to tip ratio fans (0.7 and 0.9). In each case the stage characteristic was compared with the results obtained with a solid casing. Significant increases in the flow range, with only modest or no loss in operating efficiency, were observed for optimum configurations at both diameter ratios.


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):  
Dakun Sun ◽  
Xiaofeng Sun ◽  
Xiaohua Liu ◽  
Feng Lin ◽  
Nie Chao Qun

A kind of novel casing treatment is proposed to realize stall margin enhancement by suppressing stall precursor in turbomachinery. In view of its different configuration and mechanism, such casing treatment is named as stall precursor-suppressed casing treatment in the present work, or SPS casing treatment for short. In the present work, the experiments of SPS casing treatment are conducted in a transonic compressor J69 Rotor/Stage. The SPS casing treatment which consists of a backchamber and a perforated plate is designed according to a proposed theoretical model. It is noted that the open area ratio of the casing treatment is only 4–12%, which is much smaller than traditional casing treatments with over 50% open area ratio. The tests show that the SPS casing treatment can improve the stall margin by 8–12% for J69 Rotor, and 4–12% for J69 Stage. Meanwhile, the mechanism of stall margin improvement with such casing treatment will be revealed in this investigation. Comparing with the evolution of the precursors without casing treatments, the propagation of the stall inception waves will be suppressed and the non-linear development of the stall process will be delayed under the casing treatment case.


2018 ◽  
Vol 140 (9) ◽  
Author(s):  
Xu Dong ◽  
Dakun Sun ◽  
Fanyu Li ◽  
Donghai Jin ◽  
Xingmin Gui ◽  
...  

Swirl inlet distortion is usually encountered in modern flight vehicles since their inlet ducts usually consist of one or two bends, such as S-inlet duct. An experimental device is first designed to simulate the swirl inlet distortion and then used to test the effectiveness of a novel casing treatment (CT) on a low-speed compressor under the swirl distortions of various intensities. The influences of co- and counter-rotating swirl inlet distortion on the test compressor and the stabilization ability of this novel CT are well demonstrated by the illustrations of static pressure rise curves and efficiency curves. The dynamic prestall pressure signals are also captured to reflect the perturbation energy in the flow field through which the mechanism of the novel CT will be indicated. The relevant results show that counter-rotating swirl distortion in small intensity could increase the compressive ability of compressor with small efficiency loss, and the co-rotating swirl distortion always brings about detrimental effects on compressor performance. At the same time, the distortion of twin swirls can cause nonuniform total pressure profile which can seriously damage the compressor performance. Besides, the stall precursor-suppressed (SPS) CT shows a good capability of stall margin (SM) enhancement no matter what swirl inlet distortions are encountered in the test compressor.


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.


Aerospace ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 12
Author(s):  
Marco Porro ◽  
Richard Jefferson-Loveday ◽  
Ernesto Benini

This work focuses its attention on possibilities to enhance the stability of an axial compressor using a casing treatment technique. Circumferential grooves machined into the case are considered and their performances evaluated using three-dimensional steady state computational simulations. The effects of rectangular and new T-shape grooves on NASA Rotor 37 performances are investigated, resolving in detail the flow field near the blade tip in order to understand the stall inception delay mechanism produced by the casing treatment. First, a validation of the computational model was carried out analysing a smooth wall case without grooves. The comparisons of the total pressure ratio, total temperature ratio and adiabatic efficiency profiles with experimental data highlighted the accuracy and validity of the model. Then, the results for a rectangular groove chosen as the baseline case demonstrated that the groove interacts with the tip leakage flow, weakening the vortex breakdown and reducing the separation at the blade suction side. These effects delay stall inception, improving compressor stability. New T-shape grooves were designed keeping the volume as a constant parameter and their performances were evaluated in terms of stall margin improvement and efficiency variation. All the configurations showed a common efficiency loss near the peak condition and some of them revealed a stall margin improvement with respect to the baseline. Due to their reduced depth, these new configurations are interesting because they enable the use of a thinner light-weight compressor case as is desirable in aerospace applications.


Author(s):  
N. K. W. Lee ◽  
E. M. Greitzer

An experimental investigation was carried out to examine the effects on stall margin of flow injection into, and flow removal out of, the endwall region of an axial compressor blade row. A primary objective of the investigation was clarification of the mechanism by which casing treatment (which involves both removal and injection) suppresses stall in turbomachines. To simulate the relative motion between blade and treatment, the injection and removal took place through a slotted hub rotating beneath a cantilevered stator row. Overall performance data and detailed (time-averaged) flowfield measurements were obtained. Flow injection and removal both increased the stalling pressure rise, but neither was as effective as the wall treatment. Removal of high blockage flow is thus not the sole reason for the observed stall margin improvement in casing or hub treatment, as injection can also contribute significantly to stall suppression. The results also indicate that the increase in stall pressure rise with injection is linked to the streamwise momentum of the injected flow, and it is suggested that this should be the focus of further studies.


Author(s):  
HaoGuang Zhang ◽  
Kang An ◽  
Feng Tan ◽  
YanHui Wu ◽  
WuLi Chu

The compressor aerodynamic design is conducted under the condition of clean inlet in general, but a compressor often operates under the condition of inlet distortion in the practical application. It has been proven by a lot of experimental and numerical investigations that inlet distortion can decrease the performance and stability of compressors. The circumferential or radial distorted inlet in mostly numerical investigations is made by changing the total pressure and total temperature in the inlet ring surface of the compressors. In most of inlet distortion experiments, distorted inlets are usually created by using wire net, flashboards, barriers or the generator of rotating distortion. The fashion of generating distorted inlet for experiment is different from that for numerical simulation. Consequently, the flow mechanism of affecting the flow field and stability of a compressor with distorted inlet for experiment is partly different than that for numerical simulation. In the numerical work reported here, the inlet distortion is generated by setting some barriers in the inlet ring surface of an axial subsonic compressor rotor. Two kinds of distorted inlet are investigated to exploring the effect of distorted range on the flow field and stability of the compressor with ten-passage unsteady numerical method. The numerical results show that the inlet distortions not only degrade the total pressure and efficiency of the compressor rotor, but also decrease the stability of the rotor. The larger the range of distorted inlet is, the stronger the adverse effect is. The comprehensive stall margin for the inlet distortion of 24 degrees and 48 degrees of ten-passages is reduced about 3.35% and 5.88% respectively. The detailed analysis of the flow field in the compressor indicates that the blockage resulted from tip clearance leakage vortex (TLV) and the flow separation near the suction surfaces of some blades tip for distorted inlet is more serious than that resulted from TLV for clean inlet. Moreover, the larger the range of distorted inlet is, the larger the range of the blockage is. The analysis of unsteady flow shows that during this process, which is that one rotor blade passes through the region affected by the distorted inlet, the range of the blockage in the rotor passage increases first, then reduces, and increases last.


Author(s):  
Tim Houghton ◽  
Ivor Day

This paper concerns the optimisation of casing grooves and the important influence of stall inception mechanism on groove performance. Installing casing grooves is a well known technique for improving the stable operating range of a compressor, but the wide-spread use of grooves is restricted by the loss of efficiency and flow capacity. In this paper, laboratory tests are used to examine the conditions under which casing treatment can be used to greatest effect. The use of a single casing groove was investigated in a recently published companion paper. The current work extends this to multiple-groove treatments and considers their performance in relation to stall inception mechanisms. Here it is shown that the stall margin gain from multiple grooves is less than the sum of the gains if the grooves were used individually. By contrast, the loss of efficiency is additive as the number of grooves increases. It is then shown that casing grooves give the greatest stall margin improvement when used in a compressor which exhibits spike-type stall inception, while modal activity before stall can dramatically reduce the effectiveness of the grooves. This finding highlights the importance of being able to predict the stall inception mechanism which might occur in a given compressor before and after grooves are added. Some published prediction techniques are therefore examined, but found wanting. Lastly, it is shown that casing grooves can, in some cases, be used to remove rotor blades and produce a more efficient, stable and light-weight rotor.


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