Vortex Structures for Highly-Loaded Subsonic Compressor Cascades With Slot Injection

Author(s):  
Huanlong Chen ◽  
Huaping Liu ◽  
Dongfei Zhang ◽  
Linxi Li

A promising flow analytical way to offset the respective shortcomings for the experimental measure and numerical simulation methods is presented. First, general topological rules which are applicable to the skin-friction vector lines on the passage surface, to the flow patterns in the cross-section of the cascade as well as on the blade-to-blade surface were deduced for the turbomachinery cascades with/without suction/blowing slots in this paper. Second, the qualitative analysis theory of the differential equation was used to investigate the distribution feature of the flow singular points for the limiting streamlines equation. The topological structure of the flow pattern on the cascade passage surfaces was discussed in detail. Third, the experiment and numerical simulations results for a linear compressor cascade passage with highly-loaded compound-lean slotted blade, which were combined to topologically examine the flow structure with penetrating slot injections through the blade pressure side and suction side. The results showed that the general topological rules are applicable and effective for flow diagnosis in highly-loaded compressor blade passage with slots. Finally, an integrated vortex control model, in which the blade compound-lean effect and the injection flow through the slots were coupled, was presented. The model shows that reasonable slot injection configurations can effectively control the concentrated shedding vortices from the suction surface of a highly-loaded compressor cascades passage, thereby the aerodynamic performance for the blade passage is remarkably improved. The present work provides a novel theoretical analysis method and insights of the flow for the turbine blade passage with cooling structures, aspirated compressor blade passage and other applications with new flow control configurations in turbomachinery field.

1998 ◽  
Vol 120 (3) ◽  
pp. 454-463 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. Sasaki ◽  
F. Breugelmans

The influence of two stacking lines, namely sweep and dihedral, has been investigated in a linear compressor cascade. Both types of blade considered are symmetric about midspan and consist of a straight central section with either swept or dihedral sections toward the endwalls. Two types of experiment have been carried out. First, a parametric study was performed by changing both the magnitude and the extent of the sweep or dihedral. In the case of swept blades, those with forward sweep (SWF), for which the stacking line is swept in the upstream direction toward the endwall, were found to have better performance than backward-swept blades. Subsequently, four sets of SWFs were compared. In the case of dihedral blades, it is well known that the dihedral is advantageous when the angle between the suction surface and the endwall is obtuse, i.e., positive dihedral. Thus, four sets of positive dihedral blades (DHP) were compared. In both SWF and DHP blades, those configurations that have better efficiency than straight blades were determined. Second, detailed three-dimensional measurements inside the blade passage were performed in the cases that showed the best performance in the parametric study. Both SWF and DHP showed significant effects on the flowfield. In the SWF case, a vortex, which has the opposite sense to the passage vortex, was observed in the forward portion inside the blade passage. This vortex supplies high-energy fluid to the endwall region and reduces the corner stall. The secondary flow is greatly reduced. In the DHP, the blade loading was reduced at the endwall and increased at the midspan. Reduction of the corner stall and the secondary flow was also observed.


Author(s):  
Seung Chul Back ◽  
Garth V. Hobson ◽  
Seung Jin Song ◽  
Knox T. Millsaps

An experimental investigation has been conducted to characterize the influence of surface roughness location and Reynolds number on compressor cascade performance. Flow field surveys have been conducted in a low-speed, linear compressor cascade. Pressure, velocity, and flow angles have been measured via a 5-hole probe, pitot probe, and pressure taps on the blades. In addition to the entirely smooth and entirely rough blade cases, blades with roughness covering the leading edge; pressure side; and 5%, 20%, 35%, 50%, and 100% of suction side from the leading edge have been studied. All of the tests have been done for Reynolds number ranging from 300,000 to 640,000.Cascade performance (i.e. blade loading, loss, and deviation) is more sensitive to roughness on the suction side than pressure side. Roughness near the trailing edge of suction side increases loss more than that near the leading edge. When the suction side roughness is located closer to the trailing edge, the deviation and loss increase more rapidly with Reynolds number. For a given roughness location, there exists a Reynolds number at which loss begins to visibly increase. Finally, increasing the area of rough suction surface from the leading edge reduces the Reynolds number at which the loss coefficient begins to increase.


Author(s):  
Zhiyuan Cao ◽  
Wei Guo ◽  
Cheng Song ◽  
Bo Liu

Tandem configuration is an effective methodology to reduce flow separation on compressor blade suction surface and to improve blade loading. However, in modern highly loaded cases, corner separation remains as its single blade counterpart. In this study, non-axisymmetric endwall profiling (NAEP) was utilized in a highly loaded tandem cascade (diffusion factor D = 0.69), aiming at reducing its severe corner separation and revealing the unique flow mechanism while NAEP is utilized in tandem cascade. NAEP was designed in both forward (F) blade and rare (R) blade separately, and was investigated numerically in tandem environment. Results show that, NAEP in F blade passage can effectively eliminate the corner separation and reduce loss generation, whereas NAEP in R blade passage has no positive effect on corner separation and even promotes loss production. The optimal NAEP approximately removes the corner separation completely, with loss coefficient reducing by as much as 37.8%. The optimal NAEP for the tandem cascade features optimal axial location at the origin of corner separation. There is an optimal NAEP height (0.02 of blade height), under which NAEP can achieve pretty good control effect while the peak of NAEP varies in a large axial location range. In the tandem configuration, it is found that NAEP transfers blade loading from R blade to F blade; the static pressure increases significantly for the entire cascade, but the static pressure distribution of F blade does not exhibit as the design intent of NAEP. In addition, it is interesting to find that the flow turning near endwall reduces after endwall profiling, which is unique in tandem cascade and is contrast to the view on conventional configuration. On the contrary, NAEP in R blade has no influence on the corner separation of the tandem cascade; due to the decrement of cross-passage pressure gradient for R blade, the flow overturning near endwall reduces.


Author(s):  
T. Sasaki ◽  
F. Breugelmans

The influence of two stacking lines, namely sweep and dihedral, has been investigated in a linear compressor cascade. Both types of blades considered are symmetrical about midspan and consist of a straight central section with either swept or dihedral sections towards the endwalls. Two types of experiments have been carried out. Firstly, a parametric study was performed by changing both the magnitude and the extent of the sweep or dihedral. In the case of swept blades, those with forward sweep (SWF), for which the stacking line is swept in the upstream direction towards the endwall, were found to have better performance than backward swept blades. Subsequently, four sets of SWFs were compared. In the case of dihedral blades, it is well-known that the dihedral is advantageous when the angle between the suction surface and the endwall is obtuse, i.e. positive dihedral. Thus, four sets of positive dihedral blades (DHP) were compared. In both SWF and DHP blades, those configurations which have better efficiency than straight blades were determined. Secondly, detailed three-dimensional measurements inside the blade passage were performed in the cases which showed the best performance in the parametric study. Both SWF and DHP showed significant effects on the flowfield. In the SWF case, a vortex, which has the opposite sense to the passage vortex, was observed in the forward portion inside the blade passage. This vortex supplies high-energy fluid to the endwall region and reduces the corner stall. The secondary flow is greatly reduced. In the DHP, the blade loading was reduced at the endwall and increased at the midspan. Also reduction of the corner stall and the secondary flow was observed.


Author(s):  
Bo Wang ◽  
Yanhui Wu ◽  
Kai Liu

Driven by the need to control flow separations in highly loaded compressors, a numerical investigation is carried out to study the control effect of wavy blades in a linear compressor cascade. Two types of wavy blades are studied with wavy blade-A having a sinusoidal leading edge, while wavy blade-B having pitchwise sinusoidal variation in the stacking line. The influence of wavy blades on the cascade performance is evaluated at incidences from −1° to +9°. For the wavy blade-A with suitable waviness parameters, the cascade diffusion capacity is enhanced accompanied by the loss reduction under high incidence conditions where 2D separation is the dominant flow structure on the suction surface of the unmodified blade. For well-designed wavy blade-B, the improvement of cascade performance is achieved under low incidence conditions where 3D corner separation is the dominant flow structure on the suction surface of the baseline blade. The influence of waviness parameters on the control effect is also discussed by comparing the performance of cascades with different wavy blade configurations. Detailed analysis of the predicted flow field shows that both the wavy blade-A and wavy blade-B have capacity to control flow separation in the cascade but their control mechanism are different. For wavy blade-A, the wavy leading edge results in the formation of counter-rotating streamwise vortices downstream of trough. These streamwise vortices can not only enhance momentum exchange between the outer flow and blade boundary layer, but also act as the suction surface fence to hamper the upwash of low momentum fluid driven by cross flow. For wavy blade-B, the wavy surface on the blade leads to a reduction of the cross flow upwash by influencing the spanwise distribution of the suction surface static pressure and guiding the upwash flow.


Author(s):  
Wei Ma ◽  
Feng Gao ◽  
Xavier Ottavy ◽  
Lipeng Lu ◽  
A. J. Wang

Recently bimodal phenomenon in corner separation has been found by Ma et al. (Experiments in Fluids, 2013, doi:10.1007/s00348-013-1546-y). Through detailed and accurate experimental results of the velocity flow field in a linear compressor cascade, they discovered two aperiodic modes exist in the corner separation of the compressor cascade. This phenomenon reflects the flow in corner separation is high intermittent, and large-scale coherent structures corresponding to two modes exist in the flow field of corner separation. However the generation mechanism of the bimodal phenomenon in corner separation is still unclear and thus needs to be studied further. In order to obtain instantaneous flow field with different unsteadiness and thus to analyse the mechanisms of bimodal phenomenon in corner separation, in this paper detached-eddy simulation (DES) is used to simulate the flow field in the linear compressor cascade where bimodal phenomenon has been found in previous experiment. DES in this paper successfully captures the bimodal phenomenon in the linear compressor cascade found in experiment, including the locations of bimodal points and the development of bimodal points along a line that normal to the blade suction side. We infer that the bimodal phenomenon in the corner separation is induced by the strong interaction between the following two facts. The first is the unsteady upstream flow nearby the leading edge whose angle and magnitude fluctuate simultaneously and significantly. The second is the high unsteady separation in the corner region.


Author(s):  
Jie Wang ◽  
Qun Zheng ◽  
Lanxin Sun ◽  
Mingcong Luo

Generally, droplets are injected into air at inlet or interstage of a compressor. However, both cases did not consider how to utilize the kinetic energy of these moving droplets. Under the adverse pressure gradient of compressor, the lower energy fluids of blade surfaces and endwalls boundary layers would accumulate and separate. Kinetic droplets could accelerate the lower energy fluids and eliminate the separation. This paper mainly investigate the effective positions where to inject water and how to utilize the droplets’ kinetic energy. Four different injecting positions, which located on the suction surface and endwall, are chosen. The changes of vortexes in the compressor cascade are discussed carefully. In addition, the influences of water injection on temperature, total pressure losses and Mach number are analyzed. Numerical simulations are performed for a highly loaded compressor cascade with ANSYS CFX software.


Author(s):  
Yuchen Ma ◽  
Jinfang Teng ◽  
Mingmin Zhu ◽  
Xiaoqing Qiang

Abstract Modern axial compressors are designed to be highly loaded in terms of aerodynamics, which can lead to challenges of increasing the compressor efficiency. Losses associated with secondary flow effects are well known to be the major limiting factor of improving the compressor performance. In this study, non-axisymmetric endwall contouring in a linear compressor cascade was generated through the optimization process. Combined with numerical simulation, wind tunnel tests on linear cascades with flat and contoured endwall were performed with various measurement techniques at the design and off-design conditions. The simulation results show that optimal endwall design can provide 3.08% reduction of the total pressure loss at the design condition. The reduction of pressure loss obtained is mainly below 24%span with the size of the high loss region being effectively reduced. At off-design condition, the numerical benefit of the endwall contouring is found less pronounced. The discrepancy is spotted between simulation and experiments. The experimental pressure loss reduction is mainly below 18% at ADP. And the pressure loss for the CEW increases greatly at offdesign condition in experiments. Flow patterns revealed by numerical simulations show that the separation on the blade surface is mitigated with focus point disappearing, and reverse flow on the endwall near the suction side corner is moved away from the blade surface. CFD analysis indicates that the altered pressure distribution on the endwall accelerates the flow at the suction side corner and moves the reverse flow core further downstream. The weakened interaction between the corner vortex and tornado-like vortex from the endwall near the suction side corner is the main control mechanism of the CEW. The performance improvement in the linear compressor is mainly gained from it.


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