Investigation of tip leakage flow unsteadiness and rotating instability in a centrifugal compressor impeller

A phenomenon called rotating instability was rarely reported in a centrifugal compressor, although some associated discussions can be found in axial compressors. This paper presents a numerical investigation on the unsteadiness of the tip leakage flow and rotating instability in an isolated centrifugal compressor impeller. A three-dimensional, unsteady full annuls simulation is performed under three different operating conditions. The tip leakage flow unsteadiness at the impeller inlet and inside the impeller passage is detected by the pressure fluctuation. During the throttling process, the temporal and spatial propagation characteristic of the tip leakage flow unsteadiness under the near stall operating condition is revealed based on the wavelet analysis, Fourier transform, and dynamic mode decomposition. Furthermore, the relationship between the tip leakage flow unsteadiness and the rotating instability is also discussed. The results show that the pressure fluctuation mainly concentrates in the tip region at the near stall operating condition, which indicates the occurrence and circumferential propagation of tip leakage flow unsteadiness. The circumferential propagation of the tip leakage flow unsteadiness induces a significant circumferential rotating pressure wave with a wave number of 9 and approximately 48.2% of the rotational speed of the impeller. The characteristic frequency of the tip leakage flow unsteadiness agrees well with the dominant mode frequency of rotating instability. Therefore, the tip leakage flow unsteadiness is assumed to be responsible for the rotating instability. During the throttling process, the formation and development of the rotating instability at near stall operating condition can be divided into three stages based on signal analysis: prior to rotating instability, generation and development, and rotating instability.

Tip Leakage Behavior and Large Coherent Perturbation Analysis of an Axial-radial Combined Compressor with Outlet Distortion

Increasing performance requirements and compact structure design promote the generation of axial-radial combined compressors. However, its complex structure and asymmetrical outlet boundary cause difficulty to get an in-depth comprehension of the flow unsteadiness associated with spike-stall. In this work, unsteady full-annular simulations of an axial-radial combined compressor coupled with performance experiment validations were carried out. Based on the overall understanding of outlet distortion on each component, the general feature of tip leakage flow with asymmetrical outlet boundary was extracted. The temporal and spatial development of large coherent perturbations was revealed by the decomposition and reconstruction of the transient flow data with the DMD approach. The results demonstrate that the outlet distortion can propagate reversely to the compressor inlet and the degree of distortion decreases gradually, which leads to the highest possibility for radial rotor to suffer from flow unsteadiness. In the circumferential location with distortion affected, the leakage momentum of the adjacent blade LE is enhanced by the secondary leakage, inducing the expansion of TLV and causing flow instability. Besides organized perturbation structures related to mean flow and BPF, two large low-frequency stall perturbations approximately one-third and three-fourth RF was captured by the DMD method, which is caused by volute potential effect and stator/rotor interference, respectively. The former occurs in the radial rotor and decays during its propagation, while the latter always exists owing to the multiple rotor/stator or stator/rotor interference in the axial-radial combined compressor.

A Study on the Effect of Flow Unsteadiness on the Yield of a Chemical Reaction in a T Micro-Reactor

Despite the very simple geometry and the laminar flow, T-shaped microreactors have been found to be characterized by different and complex steady and unsteady flow regimes, depending on the Reynolds number. In particular, flow unsteadiness modifies strongly the mixing process; however, little is known on how this change may affect the yield of a chemical reaction. In the present work, experiments and 3-dimensional numerical simulations are carried out jointly to analyze mixing and reaction in a T-shaped microreactor with the ultimate goal to investigate how flow unsteadiness affects the reaction yield. The onset of the unsteady asymmetric regime enhances the reaction yield by more than 30%; however, a strong decrease of the yield back to values typical of the vortex regime is observed when the flow undergoes a transition to the unsteady symmetric regime.

A Modified Chezy Formula for One-Dimensional Unsteady Frictional Resistance in Open Channel Flow

It has been observed in literature that for unsteady flow conditions the one-to-one relationships between flow depth, cross-sectional averaged velocity, and frictional resistance as determined from steady uniform flow cases may not be appropriate for these more complex flow systems. Thus, a general friction resistance formula needs to be modified through the addition of new descriptive terms to account for flow unsteadiness, in order to eliminate errors due to uniform and steady-flow assumptions. An extended Chezy formula incorporating both time and space partial derivatives of hydraulic parameters was developed using dimensional analysis to investigate the relationship between flow unsteadiness and friction resistance. Results show that the proposed formula performs better than the traditional Chezy formula for simulating real hydrograph cases whereby both formula coefficients are individually identified for each flood event and coefficients are predetermined using other flood events as calibration cases. Although the extended Chezy formula as well as the original Chezy formula perform worse with the increasing degree of flow unsteadiness, its results are less dramatically affected by unsteadiness intensity, thereby improving estimations of flood routing. As a result, it tends to perform much better than traditional Chezy formula for severe flood events. Under more complex conditions whereby peak flooding events may occur predominantly under unsteady flow, the extended Chezy model may provide as a valuable tool for researchers, practitioners, and water managers for assessing and predicting impacts for flooding and for the development of more appropriate mitigation strategies and more accurate risk assessments.