Experimental study of self-recirculating casing treatment in a subsonic axial flow compressor

Author(s):  
Wei Wang ◽  
Wuli Chu ◽  
Haoguang Zhang ◽  
Yanhui Wu

Parametric studies of recirculating casing treatment were experimentally performed in a subsonic axial flow compressor. The recirculating casing treatment was parameterized with injector throat height, injection position, and circumferential coverage percentage. Eighteen recirculating casing treatments were tested to study the effects on compressor stability and on the compressor overall performance at three blade speeds. The profiles of recirculating casing treatment were optimized to minimize the losses generated by air recirculation. In the experiment, the stalling mass flow rate, total pressure ratio, and adiabatic efficiency of the compressor were measured to study the steady-state effects on the compressor performance of recirculating casing treatments, and static pressure disturbances on the casing wall were monitored to study the influence on stall dynamics. Results indicate that both the compressor stability and overall performance can be improved through recirculating casing treatment with appropriate geometrical parameters for all the test speeds. The influence on stall margin of one geometric parameter often depends on the choice of others, i.e. the interaction effects exist. In general, the recirculating casing treatment with a moderate injector throat and a large circumferential coverage is the optimal choice to enhance compressor stability. The injector of recirculating casing treatment should be placed upstream of the blade tip leading edge and the injector throat height should be lower than four times the rotor tip gap for the benefits of compressor efficiency. At 71% speed, the blade tip loading is decreased through recirculating casing treatment at the operating condition of near peak efficiency and increased near stall. Moreover, the outlet absolute flow angle is reduced in the tip region and enhanced at lower blade spans for both operating conditions. The stall inceptions are not changed with the implementation of recirculating casing treatment for all the test speeds, but the stall patterns are altered at 33% and 53% speeds, i.e. the stall with two cells is detected in the recirculating casing treatment compared with the solid casing with only one stall cell.

Author(s):  
Dilipkumar B. Alone ◽  
Subramani Satish Kumar ◽  
Shobhavathy Thimmaiah ◽  
Janaki Rami Reddy Mudipalli ◽  
A. M. Pradeep ◽  
...  

A bend skewed casing treatment was designed, to study the influence of one of its geometrical parameter porosity on the stable performance of single stage transonic axial flow compressor. The compressor was designed for the stage total-to-total pressure ratio of 1.35, corrected mass flow rate of 22 kg/s at corrected design speed of 12930 RPM. Bend skewed casing treatment has an axial inlet segment till 50% of the total length and rear segment that is skewed by 45° in the direction of the rotor tip section stagger. Both the sections were oriented at a skew angle of 45° to the radial plane such that the flow exiting the slot is in counter-clockwise direction to that of the rotor direction. The casing treatment slot width was equal to the maximum thickness of the rotor blades. Three casing treatment configurations were identified for the current experimental investigation. All the treatment geometries considered for the experimental research have lower porosities than reported in the open literatures. The effect of the porosity parameter on the performance of transonic compressor stage was evaluated at two axial coverages of 20% and 40% relative to the rotor tip axial chord. Performance maps were obtained for the solid casing and casing treatment with three different porosities. Comparative studies were carried out and experimental results showed a maximum of 65% improvement in the stable operating range of the compressor for one of the treatment configurations. It was also observed that the stable operating range of the compressor increases with an increase in the casing treatment porosity. All the casing treatment configurations showed that the compressor stall occurs at lower mass flows as compared to the solid casing. Compressor stage peak efficiency shows significant degradations with increase in the porosity as compared to solid casing. Detailed blade element performances were also obtained using calibrated multi-hole aerodynamic probe. Comparative variations of flow parameters like absolute flow angle, Mach number were studied at full flow and near stall conditions for the solid casing and casing treatment configurations. Hot wire measurements show very high fluctuation in the inlet axial velocity in the presence of solid casing as compared to casing treatments. Experimental investigation revealed that the porosity of the casing treatments has strong influence on the transonic compressor stage performance.


Author(s):  
Wei Wang ◽  
Wuli Chu ◽  
Haoguang Zhang ◽  
Yanhui Wu

Recirculating casing treatment (RCT) was studied in a subsonic axial flow compressor experimentally and numerically. The RCT was parameterized with the injector throat height and circumferential coverage percentage (ccp) to investigate its influence on compressor stability and on the overall performance in the experimentation. The injector throat height varied from 2 to 6 times the height of the rotor tip clearance, and the ccp ranged from 8.3% to 25% of the casing perimeter. Various RCT configurations were achieved with a modular design procedure. The rotor casing was instrumented with fast-response pressure transducers to detect the stall inception, rotational speed of stall cells, and pressure flow fields. Whole-passage unsteady simulations were also implemented for the RCT and solid casing to understand the flow details. Results indicate that both the compressor stability and overall performance can be improved through RCT with appropriate geometrical parameters. The effect of injector throat height on the stability depends on the choice of ccp, i.e., interaction effect exists. In general, the RCT with a moderate injector throat height and a large circumferential coverage is the optimal choice. Phase-locked pattern of the casing wall pressure reveals a weakened tip leakage vortex under the effect of RCT compared with the solid casing. The numerical results show that the RCT has a substantial effect on tip blockage even when the blade passages break away from the domain of RCT. The reduction of tip blockage induced by the tip leakage vortex is the main reason for the extension of stable operation range. The unsteadiness of double-leakage flow is detected both in the experiment and in numerical simulations. The pressure fluctuations caused by double-leakage flow are depressed with RCT. This observation indicates reduced losses related with the double-leakage flow. Although the stall inception is not changed by implementing RCT, the stall pattern is altered. The stall with two cells is detected in RCT compared with the solid casing with only one stall cell.


1975 ◽  
Vol 97 (4) ◽  
pp. 477-483 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. P. Boyce ◽  
R. N. Schiller ◽  
A. R. Desai

The phenomenon of surge in an axial flow compressor has long eluded the analytical fluid dynamist. In the recent years, a growing degree of improvement and sophistication in the design of axial flow compressors to achieve higher pressure ratios has resulted in increasingly narrow domains of stable operation. A search for improving stability margins revealed the importance of the blade tip region and casing treatments. The authors have approached the problem by both experimental and analytical methods. The results are mutually confirming. Important new inroads have been made in understanding the flow in the blade tip region, operation of casing treatments and the mechanism of the onset of surge. Some significant conclusions in the selection and design of casing treatments and their effects on the stability margin are presented and explained on the basis of experimental and theoretical results.


1982 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yao-Lin Gao ◽  
Ke-Ming Li

This paper discusses the effect of tip treatment in the rear stages of a compressor on the high speed stall margin and efficiency. A nine stage engine compressor was tested in a rig with and without casing treatment on the tip sections of the last three rotors. Another series of tests were conducted on a modified compressor with twisted rotor blades in the rear stages. For both compressors, tip treatment improved high speed surge margin. The first compressor encountered no loss of efficiency with the addition of tip treatment, but the second compressor suffered a loss of efficiency.


Author(s):  
M. Akhlaghi ◽  
R. L. Elder ◽  
K. W. Ramsden

The objective of the current study was to investigate the effect of casing treatment on a multistage axial flow compressor. The main purpose of the investigation was to extend the range and operability of multistage axial compressors. The study seeks to establish whether a vane-recessed tubular-passage casing-treatment could provide beneficial stall margin improvement, without sacrificing the efficiencies of the compressor with the restricted space available for the treatment. A casing treatment that consisted of three parts: an outer casing ring, with a tubular shaped passage on the inside, a set of 120 evenly spaced curved vanes, and then a shroud or inner ring was developed from two initial designs. The casing treatment, manufactured from high quality acrylic, was positioned upstream and partly covering the tip of the first stage rotor blades. The casing treatment was tested on the first stage of a three-stage low-speed compressor with inlet guide vanes with the rear two stages removed. The rotor blade tip axial chord exposure had a significant impact on the effectiveness of the casing treatment. Seven compressor configuration incorporating casing treatments of 23.2%, 33.3%, 43.4%, 53.5%, 63.6%, 73.7% and 83.8% rotor exposure were tested. The results showed significant improvements in stall margin in all exposures and insignificant efficiency sacrifices in some exposures. Nearly 29% of stall margin improvement in terms of the corrected mass flow rate was achieved with 33.3% rotor blade tip axial chord exposure. The compressor build with 53.5% rotor exposure was the best configuration in terms of maximum efficiency gain. In terms of peak pressure rise coefficients the compressor configuration with a casing treatment of 63.6% exposure was the best design. The results also suggest that the vane-recessed tubular-passage casing treatment designed as part of this research, in most instances enabled the stall conditions in the compressor to become progressive rather than abrupt.


Author(s):  
Dario Bruna ◽  
Carlo Cravero ◽  
Mark G. Turner

The development of a computational tool (MP-LOS) for the aerodynamic loss modeling and prediction for axial-flow compressor blade sections is presented in this paper. A state-of-the-art quasi 3-D flow solver, MISES, has been used for the flow analysis on existing airfoil geometries in many working conditions. Different values of inlet flow angle, inlet Mach number, AVDR, Reynolds number and solidity have been chosen to investigate a possible working range. The target is a loss prediction formulation that will be introduced into throughflow or axisymmetric Navier-Stokes codes for the performance prediction of multistage axial flow compressors. The loss coefficient has been correlated to the flow parameters that have shown an influence on the profile loss for the blades under study. The proposed correlation, using the described computational approach, can be extended to any profile family with the aid of any code for the parametric design of blade profiles.


Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (19) ◽  
pp. 6143
Author(s):  
Xiaoxiong Wu ◽  
Bo Liu ◽  
Botao Zhang ◽  
Xiaochen Mao

Numerical simulations have been performed to study the effect of the circumferential single-grooved casing treatment (CT) at multiple locations on the tip-flow stability and the corresponding control mechanism at three tip-clearance-size (TCS) schemes in a transonic axial flow compressor rotor. The results show that the CT is more efficient when its groove is located from 10% to 40% tip axial chord, and G2 (located at near 20% tip axial chord) is the best CT scheme in terms of stall-margin improvement for the three TCS schemes. For effective CTs, the tip-leakage-flow (TLF) intensity, entropy generation and tip-flow blockage are reduced, which makes the interface between TLF and mainstream move downstream. A quantitative analysis of the relative inlet flow angle indicates that the reduction of flow incidence angle is not necessary to improve the flow stability for this transonic rotor. The control mechanism may be different for different TCS schemes due to the distinction of the stall inception process. For a better application of CT, the blade tip profile should be further modified by using an optimization method to adjust the shock position and strength during the design of a more efficient CT.


Author(s):  
Jialing Lu ◽  
Wuli Chu ◽  
Yanhui Wu

In recent years endwall profiling has been well validated as a major new engineering design tool for the reduction of secondary loss in turbines. However, its application on compressors have been rarely performed and reported. This paper documents the findings of the analysis for diminishing compressor stator corner separation using endwall profiling; In the study, novel profiled endwalls were designed and numerically studied on a subsonic axial-flow compressor stage. The compressor stator endwalls were profiled on both axial and azimuthal directions. The results showed, the stator corner separation was significantly suppressed under all the operating conditions by implementing this profiled endwall. Significant improvements on stage pressure ratios and stage efficiency were observed. Detailed flow field changes, as well as endwall profiling methods are provided in the paper, so that the results of this research can be referenced to other compressor designs.


Author(s):  
HaoGuang Zhang ◽  
XuDong Zhang ◽  
YanHui Wu ◽  
WuLi Chu ◽  
HaiYang Kuang

The objective of this study is to evaluate the effect of cross-blade slot casing treatment on the stability and performance of an axial flow compressor rotor. The experimental and unsteady calculated results both show that cross-blade slot casing treatment can generate about 22% stall margin improvement, and the compressor peak efficiency is reduced by about 13%. The detailed flow-field analyses indicate that the sucked and injected flow caused by the slots of cross-blade slot casing treatment can restrain the rotor tip passage blockage, which is made by the low energy tip clearance leakage vortex. When cross-blade slot casing treatment is applied, not only the rotor wheel flange work becomes lower in most of the rotor blade span, but also the flow loss in the blade tip passage becomes fairly large due to the strong interaction between the mainstream and the injected flows made by the slots. As a result, the compressor total pressure ratio and efficiency for cross-blade slot casing treatment are reduced obviously. Three kinds of new cross-blade slot casing treatment were designed according to the previous successful experience and investigated in this paper. The numerical results show that the new three cross-blade slot casing treatments both generate about 54% stall margin improvement at the cost of minor peak efficiency. For one new cross-blade slot casing treatment (CSCT2), the compressor peak efficiency is reduced by about 0.3%. The low energy TLV, which is present for cross-blade slot casing treatment, is removed by the strong sucked flow made by CSCT2. Moreover, the interaction between the mainstream and the injected flows caused by CSCT2 becomes weak obviously, and the corresponding flow loss is reduced greatly. Hence, the compressor stability and performance with CSCT2 are higher than those with cross-blade slot casing treatment.


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