INTERPRETATION OF STALL PRECURSOR SIGNATURES

A specific phenomenon that has been observed in many experimental studies on turbomachinery compressors and fans is discussed under the term ‘rotating instabilities’. It is associated to a local aerodynamic phenomenon, typically occurring in the tip region at highly loaded near stall conditions and often linked to blade vibrations. Even though the effect has been discussed over more than two decades, a very ambiguous interpretation still prevails. A particular problem is that certain signatures in measurement data are often considered to characterize the phenomenon despite possible misinterpretations. The present paper illustrates that a specific image of a pulsating disturbance that has been established in the 1990s needs to be reconsidered. At the example of a recent investigation on a composite fan the difficulties concerning sensor placement and post-processing techniques is discussed with a focus on spectral averaging, isolation of non-synchronous phenomena and multi-sensor cross-correlation methods.

Further Investigation on Acoustic Stall-Warning Approach in Compressors

A further investigation of an acoustic theory-based stall-warning approach is presented in this paper, which contains the basis of this approach and an application on a low-speed compressor (LSC) with a stabilization system. In the present work, this stall-warning approach is first explained through a numerical simulation in which the periodicity of pressure signals is analyzed, and then application experiments of this approach are actualized on a LSC with a stall precursor-suppressed (SPS) casing treatment (CT) as a stabilization system. For this stall-warning approach, a parameter named Rc is calculated through pressure signals of compressor to evaluate the periodicity of pressure signal, and statistical estimates are implemented on Rc so that the probabilities for Rc less than a threshold Rcth can be used as a criterion for stall warning. The numerical and experimental results both show that the signal resolution is determined by the sensor position, the prestall signal amplitude decreases rapidly with the increase of the distance between sensor and blades. Results also show that the probability increases significantly when the operating point is nearing the stall boundary. And at the same operating point, the probability value of Rc will decrease when the SPS CT is engaged. Through this stall-warning approach, a stabilization system based on SPS CT can be activated when the stall margin needs to be extended.

Experimental and Numerical Analysis of Unsteady Flow Structure in a Centrifugal Compressor With Variable Vaned Diffuser

The unsteady flow at small flow rates is always the most important of typical unsteady phenomena in centrifugal compressors, since it is closely related to the operating safety and efficiency. To study the mechanism of stall and surge generation, an experimental research on an industrial centrifugal compressor with variable vaned diffuser is carried out to study the unsteady flow structure from design point to surge. A multi-phase dynamic pressure measurement is conducted, based on 23 dynamic pressure sensors mounted on the shroud side casing surface of the compressor. The sensors are circumferentially distributed in a non-uniform manner at seven different radial positions, including the impeller region, the vaneless region and the diffuser throat region. Real-time data is recorded during the whole valve-adjusting process. The characteristics of pressure fields at some specific operating conditions are focused on, especially the pre-stall, stall precursor, stall and surge conditions. According to the multiphase data association, the originating position of the stall precursor can be determined. The features of the unsteady flow structure are also obtained, such as the surge pattern and the propagation direction of stall cells. In addition, when the diffuser vane setting angle (OGV) is turned up, the core factors to trigger total instability will change. In order to visually show how the tip leakage and separation vortex in the impeller gradually affect the flow structure in the vaned diffuser region and even the whole machine, numerical simulation and dynamic mode decomposition (DMD) method are used to study the flow mechanisms. The numerical simulation result is well matched with the experimental result. With the help of the DMD method, a few low-frequency tip leakage vortex structures are extracted from the unsteady numerical result over a period of time, which correlate with the experimental result. Meanwhile, on this issue, the feasibility of dynamic experimental analysis combined with multi-channel numerical simulation analysis is verified and discussed. Through the two analytic methods, a detailed understanding of the unsteady flow structure in the centrifugal compressor with variable vaned diffuser is obtained.

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

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.

Effects of Stall Precursor-Suppressed Casing Treatment on a Low-Speed Compressor With Swirl Distortion

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.

Bifurcation Predication in Axial Compressors with Nonuniform Inflow via Deterministic Learning

The nonlinear dynamics of fluid instabilities such as rotating stall and surge in axial compressors are typically modeled as subcritical Hopf bifurcations with hysteresis. The bifurcation prediction provides an effective approach to avoid the occurrence of compressor’s instability. In this paper, based on a fluid dynamic model developed recently, a stall precursor detection approach employing deterministic learning (DL) is proposed for bifurcation predication in axial compressors with nonuniform inflow. The stall precursor near the bifurcation can be obtained as the throttle area parameter approaches its critical (or bifurcation) value. Firstly, the system dynamics underlying normal and stall precursor are locally approximated accurately through DL. The obtained knowledge of dynamics is stored in constant radial basis function (RBF) networks. Secondly, a bank of estimators is built up using the stored constant RBF networks to represent the learning normal and stall precursor patterns. By comparing each estimator with a test system, the average [Formula: see text] norms of the residuals are taken as the measure of the dynamical differences between the test system and the learning patterns. The occurrence of stall precursor as a bifurcation predication signal can be rapidly detected according to the smallest residual principle. Finally, simulation results are given to show the effectiveness of stall precursor detection approach.

Effects of inlet radial distortion on the type of stall precursor in low-speed axial compressor

Experimental investigations of the effect of inlet blade loading on the rotating stall inception process are carried out on a single-stage low-speed axial compressor. Temporal pressure signals from the six high response pressure transducers are used for the analysis. Pressure variations at the hub are especially recorded during the stall inception process. Inlet blade loading is altered by installing metallic meshed distortion screens at the rotor upstream. Three sets of experiments are performed for the comparison of results, i.e. uniform inlet flow, tip, and hub distortions, respectively. Regardless of the type of distortion introduced to the inflow, the compressor undergoes a performance drop, which is more severe in the hub distortion case. Under the uniform inlet flow condition, stall inception is caused by the modal type disturbance while the stall precursor switched to spike type due to the highly loaded blade tip. In the presence of high blade loading at the hub, spike disappeared and the compressor once again witnessed a modal type disturbance. Hub pressure fluctuations are observed throughout the process when the stall is caused by a modal wave while no disturbance is noticed at the hub in spike type stall inception. It is believed that the hub flow separation contributes to the modal type of stall inception phenomenon. Results are also supported by the recently developed signal processing techniques for the stall inception study.

Stall Warning Approach With Application to Stall Precursor-Suppressed Casing Treatment

The present work develops a stall warning approach with application to a stall enhancement system. This technique is proposed on the basis of the periodicity of pressure signals sampled by the dynamic pressure sensor which is located on the casing wall at the rotor leading edge. A parameter called Rc, defined to evaluate this periodicity, is calculated by pressure signals within 1 blade pitches in the current one and previous one shaft period. Statistical estimates are implemented on Rc within statistical windows which move with sampling. The probabilities of Rc less than a threshold Rcth are calculated and used as a criterion for stall warning. Experiments are carried out on a low speed compressor with a stall precursor-suppressed (SPS) casing treatment, an efficient stall enhancement system. Results show that the probability increases significantly when the stall boundary is approached. At the same work point, the value of probability will decrease when the SPS casing treatment is turned on. This approach successfully generates a stall warning signal and then triggers the SPS casing treatment when the stall margin needs to be extended.