Effects of segmented layer suction and micro-vortex generator on a high-load compressor cascade performance

Author(s):  
Shan Ma ◽  
Wuli Chu ◽  
Xiaolin Sun ◽  
Zhengtao Guo ◽  
Song Yan

The axial location of full-span boundary layer suction is studied to explore the influences of suction slot on the cascade performance. At the design condition, the slot with 50% axial location shows a superior capability to reduce the total pressure loss. At the near stall condition, the more upstream of the suction slot is moved, the more total pressure loss is reduced, and the suction slot with a location of 0.7 axial chord length cannot effectively reduces the total pressure loss in all conditions. Moreover, a rearranged segmented suction slot according to the distribution characteristics of the flow reversal region is developed and compared with full-span boundary layer suction. The segmented suction slot shows significant advantages in delaying the stall occurrence, and the stall point is delayed from 7.9° to 10.0° compared with the baseline. According to a quantitative analysis method selected to measure the performances of flow control technologies, the wake loss is significantly reduced by the segmented suction slot. Finally, a set of micro-vortex generator is introduced in the cascade with a segmented suction slot, and the conclusion indicates that the portion near the end-wall is very effective to reduce the flow loss.

Author(s):  
Shan Ma ◽  
Wuli Chu ◽  
Haoguang Zhang ◽  
Chuanle Liu

The performance of a compressor cascade is considerably influenced by flow control methods. In this paper, the synergistic effects of combination between micro-vortex generators (MVG) and boundary layer suction (BLS) are discussed in a high-load compressor cascade. Seven cases, which are grouped by a kind of micro-vortex generator and boundary layer suction with three locations, are investigated to control secondary flow effects and enhance the aerodynamic performance of the compressor cascade. The MVG is mounted on the end-wall in front of the passage. The rectangle suction slot with three radial positions is installed on the blade suction surface near the trailing edge. The numerical results show that: at the design condition, the total pressure loss is effectively decreased as well as the static pressure coefficient increase when the combined MVG and SBL method (COM) is used, which is superior to MVG in an aerodynamic performance. At the stall condition, the induced vortex coming from MVG could mix the low-energy fluid and mainstream, which result in the reduced separation, and the total pressure loss decreased by 11.54% when the suction flow ratio is 1.5%. The total pressure loss decreases by 14.59% when the COM control methods are applied.


Author(s):  
Ping-Ping Chen ◽  
Wei-Yang Qiao ◽  
Karsten Liesner ◽  
Robert Meyer

The large secondary flow area in the compressor hub-corner region usually leads to three-dimensional separation in the passage with large amounts of total pressure loss. In this paper numerical simulations of a linear high-speed compressor cascade, consisting of five NACA 65-K48 stator profiles, were performed to analyze the flow mechanism of hub-corner separation for the base flow. Experimental validation is used to verify the numerical results. Active control of the hub-corner separation was investigated by using boundary layer suction. The influence of the selected locations of the endwall suction slot was investigated in an effort to quantify the gains of the compressor cascade performance. The results show that the optimal chordwise location should contain the development section of the three-dimensional corner separation downstream of the 3D corner separation onset. The best pitchwise location should be close enough to the vanes’ suction surface. Therefore the optimal endwall suction location is the MTE slot, the one from 50% to 75% chord at the hub, close to the blade suction surface. By use of the MTE slot with 1% suction flow ratio, the total-pressure loss is substantially decreased by about 15.2% in the CFD calculations and 9.7% in the measurement at the design operating condition.


Author(s):  
Cong Chen ◽  
Jianyang Yu ◽  
Fu Chen

In order to explore the control mechanism of vortex generator jet, which is located in the passage (PVGJ), on the separation flow, the influence of the pitch angle, skew angle, locations and jet-to-inflow ratio are studied using numerical methods in a high subsonic compressor cascade. The changing of the flow pattern is also analyzed in detail. The results show that the control effect of the end-wall vortex generator jet located in the passage is better than the leading edge one and the aerodynamic performance is effectively improved. The maximum total pressure loss coefficient decreases by 12% and the static pressure coefficient increases by 5.2% while the jet-to-inflow ratio is only 0.3%. The control effect is sensitive to the change of jet parameters. When 0 deg < β < 80 deg, 20 deg < α < 50 deg,, x < 0.5B, y < 0.15t, the vortex generation jet could acquire an ideal control effect. As the jet mass increases, the total pressure loss coefficient gradually reduces. The VGJ prevent separation mainly by bringing high momentum fluid into the near wall region and by promoting momentum transport through turbulent mixing in previous studies. Both the LVGJ and PVGJ mainly take advantage of jet vortex to prevent the cross flow from interacting with the suction side boundary layer.


Author(s):  
Cong Chen ◽  
Huaping Liu ◽  
Fu Chen

This paper presents a numerical and experimental result of the end-wall vortex generator jets for controlling corner separation and enhancing the aerodynamic performance in a high subsonic (Ma = 0.7) compressor cascade. The experiments were carried out on a compressor cascade at design point ( i = 0°) and off-design points ( i = −2°, 2°, and 4°). At design point, the total pressure loss coefficient could be reduced up to 12.1%.With the increase in the incidence, the control effect is enhanced first and then reduced. The maximum total pressure loss reduction is up to 14.6% when the incidence is 2°. The numerical study is further conducted to analyze the flow pattern and the vortex structure. The jet vortex is formed downstream of the jet hole using the vortex generator jets, the cross flow on the end wall is also suppressed.


Author(s):  
R. L. Evans

The turbulent profile boundary layer on a one-foot chord compressor cascade blade has been measured with varying levels of freestream turbulence. Increased levels of freestream turbulence were found to increase the fullness of the velocity profiles, with a consequent decrease in displacement thickness and an increase in the skin friction coefficient. A small increase in freestream turbulence causes the cascade total-pressure loss to increase initially, while at the higher turbulence levels boundary layer separation was delayed, resulting in a decrease in the total-pressure loss and deviation angle.


Author(s):  
Utpal Chakraborthy ◽  
A. M. Pradeep

An experimental study in a low speed compressor cascade was carried out to investigate the effect of distributed suction (aspiration) on the cascade performance. Unlike suction used conventionally, distributed suction requires lower mass flow rates and is achieved by suction through holes of very small diameter distributed over the surface. A set of 5 NACA - 65(18)10 blades were used in the experiments that were carried out at a Reynolds number of 1.6 × 105. Detailed measurement of surface static pressure, total pressure loss in the wake of the blades and boundary layer thicknesses were taken at incidence angles in the range −10 to +6 degrees. Significant effect of suction was observed on the total pressure loss distribution at the trailing edge of the blades. The mean total pressure loss coefficient reduced in the range 14 to 36 percent for the various configurations tested. Higher performance improvement was observed at negative incidence angles. Boundary layer measurements revealed that the effect of suction was prominent in the mid-span of the blades. Reduction in boundary layer momentum thickness in the range 8 to 20 percent was observed for the various configurations. The calculated diffusion factor also showed improving trends in line with the observations of total pressure loss and boundary layer thicknesses. The mass flow ratio for the best configuration was only 0.15 percent of the primary mass flow. This experimental study demonstrates the effectiveness of distributed suction (using only a fraction of the primary mass flow) on compressor cascade performance.


Author(s):  
Shan Ma ◽  
Xiaolin Sun

The development of boundary layer affects the compressor cascade performance to a certain extent. Therefore, the compound lean and little blades are selected to redistribute the boundary layer, and the influences of these two flow control technologies on the axial compressor cascade performance are further studied. The calculated results showed that appropriate high pressure region on the blade suction surface near the end-wall is helpful to reduce the total pressure loss of compressor cascade, which can be achieved by positive lean technique. Meanwhile, the maximum stable operation boundary can be expanded by the application of positive leaned blade. On the other hand, the introduction of negative lean angle not only increases the total pressure loss of cascade, but reduces the stable operation range. As the little blades are introduced in the negative lean compressor cascade, the stable operation range is significantly improved by the introduction of little blades. Especially the cascade with −10° lean angle, the maximum stable operation boundary is increased from 1° to 6°. In the positive lean compressor cascade, although more low-energy fluid is accumulated on the blade suction surface near the mid-span, the little blades still show an active role in reducing the total pressure loss and expending the stable operation range, because the influence range of induced vortex reaches 30%span. The results provide a reference for improving the aerodynamic performance of compressor stator, especially when more low-energy fluid is blocked in the range near the mid-span.


Author(s):  
Matthias Boese ◽  
Leonhard Fottner

An experimental investigation of the influence of riblet surface structures on the loss behavior of a highly loaded compressor cascade V103-180 featuring a large chord length for high spatial resolution of the flow phenomena was performed. The cascade experiments were carried out at the High Speed Cascade Wind Tunnel of the University of the Armed Forces Munich in order to simulate realistic Mach and Reynolds numbers. The riblets used for the first investigation are of symmetric v-groove type with heights of 0.0762, 0.1143 and 0.1524 mm, respectively [1]. With two total pressure probes simultaneously traversed over one pitch behind the center airfoil, the local total pressure difference between the structured and the smooth blade is determined. From these measurements, the total pressure loss coefficient can be evaluated. For a better understanding of the flow phenomena, the profile pressure distribution is measured for the smooth and the structured blade. Boundary layer calculations were performed in order to optimise the riblet size for the design conditions of the compressor cascade. Resulting from the measurements an optimised riblet configuration (size and shape) has been manufactured and transferred to the cascade. Further flow measurements have been performed in order to evaluate the total pressure loss coefficient. Additional insight into the flow phenomena of the boundary layer has been achieved by laser-two-focus measurements. The experimental results indicate that the riblets mainly influence the suction side boundary layer behaviour. The ideal dimensionless groove height is obtained h+ = 9 leading to a reduction of the loss coefficient of 6–8%. Values of h+ &gt; 20 cause an increase of the loss coefficient due to the development of a turbulent boundary layer separation.


2015 ◽  
Vol 137 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mahesh K. Varpe ◽  
A. M. Pradeep

This paper describes the design of a nonaxisymmetric hub contouring in a shroudless axial flow compressor cascade operating at near stall condition. Although an optimum tip clearance (TC) reduces the total pressure loss, further reduction in the loss was achieved using hub contouring. The design methodology presented here combines an evolutionary principle with a three-dimensional (3D) computational fluid dynamics (CFD) flow solver to generate different geometric profiles of the hub systematically. The resulting configurations were preprocessed by GAMBIT© and subsequently analyzed computationally using ANSYSFluent©. The total pressure loss coefficient was used as a single objective function to guide the search process for the optimum hub geometry. The resulting three dimensionally complex hub promises considerable benefits discussed in detail in this paper. A reduction of 15.2% and 16.23% in the total pressure loss and secondary kinetic energy (SKE), respectively, is achieved in the wake region. An improvement of 4.53% in the blade loading is observed. Other complimentary benefits are also listed in the paper. The majority of the benefits are obtained away from the hub region. The contoured hub not only alters the pitchwise static pressure gradient but also acts as a vortex generator in an effort to alleviate the total pressure loss. The results confirm that nonaxisymmetric contouring is an effective method for reducing the losses and thereby improving the performance of the cascade.


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