Design Optimization of a Dual-Bleeding Recirculation Channel to Enhance Operating Stability of a Transonic Axial Compressor

The present work performed a comprehensive investigation to find the effects of a dual-bleeding port recirculation channel on the aerodynamic performance of a single-stage transonic axial compressor, NASA Stage 37, and optimized the channel’s configuration to enhance the operating stability of the compressor. The compressor’s performance was examined using three parameters: The stall margin, adiabatic efficiency, and pressure ratio. Steady-state three-dimensional Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes analyses were performed to find the flow field and aerodynamic performance. The results showed that the addition of a bleeding channel increased the recirculation channel’s stabilizing effect compared to the single-bleeding channel. Three design variables were selected for optimization through a parametric study, which was carried out to examine the influences of six geometric parameters on the channel’s effectiveness. Surrogate-based design optimization was performed using the particle swarm optimization algorithm coupled with a surrogate model based on the radial basis neural network. The optimal design was found to increase the stall margin by 51.36% compared to the case without the recirculation channel with only 0.55% and 0.28% reductions in the peak adiabatic efficiency and maximum pressure ratio, respectively.

Aeroelastic aspects of Axial Compressor Stage with Self-Recirculating Casing Treatment

For successful implementation of casing treatment designs in axial compressors, apart from the stall margin improvement benefits, aeroelasticity also plays a major role. This manuscript addresses the not often discussed aeroelastic aspects of a new discrete type of passive Self-Recirculating Casing Treatment (RCT) designed for a transonic axial compressor stage. Experiments are carefully designed for synchronized measurement of the unsteady fluidic disturbances and vibrations during rotating stall for compressor with baseline solid casing and Self-RCT. The modal characteristics of the axial compressor rotor-disk assembly are studied experimentally and numerically. Experimentally it is observed that the rotating stall cells excite the blades in their fundamental mode in a compressor with baseline solid casing at the stall flow condition. In contrast, there is no excitation of the blades in the compressor with self-recirculating casing treatment at the same solid casing stall flow condition. Also, the self-recirculating casing treatment compared to the solid casing can significantly reduce the overall vibration levels of the blades that are excited at the stall flow condition. The casing treatment is able to alter the flow field near the tip region of the rotor blade, and hence influencing the forcing function of the rotating cantilever blades to have the aeroelastic benefit.

Effect of hub clearance size and shape of a cantilevered stator on the performance of a small-scale transonic axial compressor

To deeply understand the hub leakage flow and its influence on the aerodynamic performance and flow behaviors of a small-scale transonic axial compressor, variations of the performance and the flow field of the compressor with different hub clearance sizes and clearance shapes were numerically analyzed. The results indicate that the hub clearance size has remarkable impacts on the overall performance of the compressor. With the increase of the hub clearance, the intensity of the hub leakage flow increases, resulting in more intense flow blockage near the stator hub, which reduces the compressor efficiency. However, the flow field near the blade mid-span is modified due to the more convergent flow as the reduced effective flow area caused by the passage blockage, and the flow separation range is narrowed, thus the flow stability of the compressor is enhanced. On this basis, two kinds of non-uniform clearance cases of expanding clearance and shrinking clearance with the same circumferential leakage area as the design clearance were investigated. The occurrence position of the double leakage flow which is closely connected with the flow loss and blockage is shifted backward by the expanding clearance, the flow capacity near the stator hub is enhanced, and the unsteady fluctuation intensity of the flow field is attenuated but fluctuation frequency remains. Similarly, the modification of the stator blade root flow field may result in the reduction of stall margin. The effect of the shrinking clearance on compressor performance is opposite to that of the expanding clearance, which reduces the peak efficiency and delays the stall inception.

Effect of Airfoil Vortex Generator on the Performance and Stability of a Transonic Axial Compressor

In the present research work, effect of airfoil vortex generator on performance and stability of transonic compressor stage is investigated through CFD simulations. In turbomachines vortex generators are used to energize boundary and generated vortex is made to interact with tip leakage flow and secondary flow vortices formed in rotor and stator blade passage. In the present numerical investigation symmetrical airfoil vortex generator is placed on rotor casing surface close to leading edge, anticipating that vortex generated will be able to disturb tip leakage flow and its interaction with rotor passage core flow. Six different vortex generator configuration are investigated by varying distance between vortex generator trailing edge and rotor leading edge. Particular vortex generator configuration shows maximum improvement of stall margin and operating range by 5.5% and 76.75% respectively. Presence of vortex generator alters flow blockage by modifying flow field in rotor tip region and hence contributes to enhancement of stall margin. As a negative effect, interaction of vortex generator vortices and casing causes surface friction and high entropy generation. As a result compressor stage pressure ratio and efficiency decreases.

Effect of Rotor Tip Casing Treatment on the Performance and Stability of a Transonic Axial Compressor

In a transonic compressor rotor, tip leakage flow interacts with passage shock, casing boundary layer and secondary flow. This leads to increase in total pressure loss and reduction of compressor stability margin. Casing treatment is one of the passive endwall geometry modification technique to control tip leakage flow interaction. In the present investigation effect of rotor tip casing treatment is investigated on performance and stability of a NASA 37 transonic compressor stage. Existing literature reveals, that endwall casing treatment slots i.e., porous casing treatment, axial slots axially skewed slots, circumferential grooves, recirculating casing treatment etc. are able to improve compressor stability margin with penalty on stage efficiency. Turbomachinery engineers and scientists are still focusing their research work to identify an endwall casing treatment configuration with improves both compressor stall margin as well as stage efficiency. Hence in the current work, as an innovative idea, effect of casing treatment slot along rotor tip mean camber line is investigated on NASA 37 compressor stage. Casing treatment slot with rectangular cross-section was created along the rotor tip mean camber line. Four different casing treatment configurations were created by changing number of slots on rotor casing surface. In all four configurations casing treatment slot width and height remains same. Flow simulation of NASA 37 compressor stage was performed with all these four casing treatment configurations. A maximum stall margin improvement of 3% was achieved with a particular slot configuration, but without any increase in compressor stage efficiency.

A Parametric Study on the Effect of Casing Treatment Slots on Performance Enhancement of a Single Stage Axial Flow Compressor

This paper numerically investigates the effect of slots on the performance of a highly subsonic axial flow compressor. The axial flow compressor consisting of 21 rotor blades with NACA 65 series blade profile was used for the simulations. The present results were obtained using different turbulence models and shear stress transport model was found to be the best one. Studies were conducted to determine the influence of length, depth and skew angle of the slot on the compressor performance. The slot width and centre-to-centre distance between the successive slots were maintained at 6.3% Ca and 11% Ca, respectively. The present study was carried out at different slot lengths (0 to 100% of axial chord, 20 to 100% of axial chord and 40 to 100% of axial chord), slot depths (7.9, 11 and 15.7% Ca) and skew angles (0°, 30°, 45° and 60°). The slot length of 20 to 100% of Ca, depth of 15.7% Ca and skew angle of 60° resulted in the best compressor performance leading to 22.1% stall margin improvement. Subsequently, flow characteristics were studied without and with slots.

Investigation of variable geometry orifice design for improving centrifugal compressor low-end performance and stable operating range

Active control of the inlet flow area in a centrifugal compressor is a method to improve compressor aerodynamic performance and stall margin. As a core part of the area control device, the variable geometry orifice is investigated and its two key design parameters are analyzed in detail, the setting angle of the orifice with respect to the shroud casing and the radial height of the orifice to the shroud casing from the orifice inner rim. This paper proposes a physics-based equation that describes the relationship of the two parameters with compressor mass flow rate and then validates the equation using numerical simulations. As far as the setting angle, the physics-based equation suggests not to be larger than 90°. The numerical results not only validate the physics-based equation but also show the most optimal angle of 78°. In terms of the orifice height, both the physics-based equation and the numerical simulations suggest an active height control of orifice in the compressor inlet duct.

Numerical Investigation on a Axial Slot Casing Treatment of a Large Circumferential Interval and Small Opening Area

Axial slot casing treatment is a common method to extend the stall margin of a compressor. Based on the mechanism of unsteady flow control, this paper redesigns axial slots with large circumferential interval and small opening area. To test the effect of this axial slot structure, unsteady numerical simulations were carried out with different slot areas and circumferential intervals. The results show that this novel axial slot casing treatment can significantly improve compressor stall margin. Meanwhile, compared with the traditional axial slot, the efficiency loss is greatly reduced. The flow field analysis shows that the new axial slot structure proposed in this paper can suppress the development of tip leakage vortex and unsteadiness in the tip region at the near stall condition through decreasing the tip loading periodically. Moreover, we find that the slot area is proportional to the improvement of stability margin. Under the same slot area, an excessive number of slots is not conducive to the improvement of the stability margin.

Some effects of non-axisymmetric tip clearance layout on axial compressor aerodynamics

A steady and unsteady numerical research is carried out to explore some effects of a specific non-axisymmetric tip clearance layout on the overall performance and stability of an axial compressor stage. For a 4-stage low-speed research compressor (LSRC) in Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU), one-eighth annulus of the inlet guide vane and the first stage rotor was modeled for this study. After the validation for the uniform tip clearance case, a specific non-axisymmetric tip clearance layout is chosen from several random cases generated by the Gaussian Probabilistic Density Function method. Unsteady time-averaged results at the near stall condition show that the chosen non-axisymmetric layout can improve the isentropic efficiency by 1.3% and extend the stall margin by 4%. Detailed analyses on flow fields are carried out to interpret the performance improvement. Due to the circumferential layout of clearance sizes, the inlet mass flow and incidence are redistributed in both the radial and circumferential directions. It leads to blade loading and tip leakage flow varying with the tip clearance size. The quantification of blockage manifests that the blockage arising from the tip leakage flow is significantly alleviated in the non-axisymmetric layout, which leads to improvements in overall performance and stall margin. Transient flow fields at the rotor tip are also analyzed at the near stall condition. For the non-axisymmetric layout, low-momentum regions originating from larger clearance sizes oscillate and develop downstream in one blade passage period.

Numerical investigation of the diffuser throat length effect on a transonic centrifugal compressor

Vaned diffuser inlet flow uniform is challenging when the impeller is throttled to stall. In this study, we extend the stable operating range of the compressor by improving the uniform flow of the diffuser inlet. First, a numerical investigation of a transonic centrifugal compressor with a vaned diffuser is presented and compared against test data. Then, a new diffuser parameterization method is pro- posed, and the throat feature of a pipe diffuser is successfully applied to parameterized vane diffusers. The influence of the throat length and divergence angle of the diffuser on the performance of the centrifugal compressor is studied via steady and non-linear harmonic simulations. Throat length delays the time of fluid pressurization and accommodates large flow instabilities from upstream—this widens the stall margin but increases mixing loss. Divergence angle affects compressor performance. Stage peak efficiency increases by about 0.58% as the divergence angle increases from 3.79° to 5.79° but drops to about 2.46% as the divergence angle further increases from 5.79° to 11.79°. This is because the boundary layers in the diffuser channel thicken with increasing divergence angle; additionally, the fluid near the hub-pressure side first becomes unstable, then flow separation occurs along the flow direction, which results in a large flow loss. Detailed performance maps of centrifugal compressors with different throat lengths and divergence angles are given to provide a reference for designing transonic centrifugal compressors.