Control of Three-Dimensional Separations in Axial Compressors by Tailored Boundary Layer Suction

2007 ◽  
Vol 130 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Semiu A. Gbadebo ◽  
Nicholas A. Cumpsty ◽  
Tom P. Hynes

One of the important ways of improving turbomachinery compressor performance is to control three-dimensional (3D) separations, which form over the suction surface and end wall corner of the blade passage. Based on the insights gained into the formation of these separations, this paper illustrates how an appropriately applied boundary layer suction of up to 0.7% of inlet mass flow can control and eliminate typical compressor stator hub corner 3D separation over a range of operating incidence. The paper describes, using computational fluid dynamics, the application of suction on the blade suction surface and end wall boundary layers and exemplifies the influence of end wall dividing streamline in initiating 3D separation in the blade passage. The removal of the separated region from the blade suction surface is confirmed by an experimental investigation in a compressor cascade involving surface flow visualization, surface static pressure, and exit loss measurements. The ensuing passage flow field is characterized by increased blade loading (static pressure difference between pressure and suction surface), enhanced average static pressure rise, significant loss removal, and a uniform exit flow. This result also enables the contribution of the 3D separation to the overall loss and passage blockage to be assessed.

Author(s):  
Ping-Ping Chen ◽  
Wei-Yang Qiao ◽  
Karsten Liesner ◽  
Robert Meyer

The large secondary flow area in the compressor hub-corner region usually leads to three-dimensional separation in the passage with large amounts of total pressure loss. In this paper numerical simulations of a linear high-speed compressor cascade, consisting of five NACA 65-K48 stator profiles, were performed to analyze the flow mechanism of hub-corner separation for the base flow. Experimental validation is used to verify the numerical results. Active control of the hub-corner separation was investigated by using boundary layer suction. The influence of the selected locations of the endwall suction slot was investigated in an effort to quantify the gains of the compressor cascade performance. The results show that the optimal chordwise location should contain the development section of the three-dimensional corner separation downstream of the 3D corner separation onset. The best pitchwise location should be close enough to the vanes’ suction surface. Therefore the optimal endwall suction location is the MTE slot, the one from 50% to 75% chord at the hub, close to the blade suction surface. By use of the MTE slot with 1% suction flow ratio, the total-pressure loss is substantially decreased by about 15.2% in the CFD calculations and 9.7% in the measurement at the design operating condition.


Author(s):  
Zhiyuan Cao ◽  
Bo Liu ◽  
Ting Zhang

In order to explore the control mechanism of boundary layer suction on the separated flows of highly loaded diffusion cascades, a linear compressor cascade, which has separated flows on the whole span and three-dimensional separations over the suction surface/endwall corner, was investigated by tailored boundary layer suction. Three suction surface-slotted schemes and two combined suction surface/endwall-slotted schemes were designed. The original cascade and the cascade with part blade span suction were experimentally investigated on a high-subsonic cascade wind tunnel. In addition, numerical simulation was employed to study the flow fields of different suction schemes in detail. The results shows that while tailored boundary layer suction at part blade span can effectively remove the separations at the suction span, the flow fields of other spans deteriorated. The reasons are the ‘C’ shape or reverse ‘C’ shape spanwise distribution of static pressure after part blade span boundary layer suction. Suction surface boundary layer suction over the whole span can obviously eliminate the separation at the suction surface. However, because of the endwall boundary layer, suction surface boundary layer suction cannot effectively remove the corner three-dimensional separation. The separation over the whole span and the three-dimensional separation at the corner are completely eliminated by combined suction surface/endwall boundary layer suction. After combined boundary layer suction, the static pressure distribution over the blade span just like the shape of ‘C’ is good for the transport of the low-energy fluid near the endwall to the midspan.


Author(s):  
Tian Liang ◽  
Bo Liu ◽  
Stephen Spence

Abstract Control of corner separation in axial compressor blade rows has attracted much interest due to its potential to improve compressor efficiency and the energy utilization in turbomachinery. This paper investigates the effectiveness and mechanisms of boundary layer suction in controlling the corner separation of a highly loaded axial compressor cascade. Numerical simulations have been carried out to investigate the effect of different suction schemes on the loss downstream of the cascade and the change in incidence characteristics with the variation of the suction flow rate. The results show that the effectiveness of flow suction in controlling the flow separation depends heavily on the proportion of the blade for which it is applied. It was found that suction along part of the blade span on the suction surface could effectively remove the separation at the region of the span influenced by the suction slot. However, this resulted in a deterioration of the flow field at other parts of the span. The full span suction scheme on the suction surface not only eliminated the separation of the boundary layer in the middle of the blade, but also significantly improved the flow uniformity near the end-wall. Despite the improvement in flow uniformity using the full-span suction scheme, a three-dimensional (3D) corner separation still existed due to the strong cross-passage pressure gradient. To improve the flow field uniformity further, two combined suction schemes with one spanwise slot on the suction surface and another slot on the end-wall were designed in order to fully remove both the separated flow on the blade suction surface and the 3D corner separation. It was found that the total pressure loss coefficient was reduced significantly by 63.8% with suction flow rates of 1.88% and 0.82% for the slots on the suction surface and the end-wall respectively. Further work showed that the behavior of the loss coefficient is different as the combination of suction flow rates is changed for different incidence. The cascade loss at high incidence operation can be more effectively reduced with suction control on the end-wall. When implementing combined suction, it is necessary to determine the best combination of suction flow rate according to the incidence level.


2005 ◽  
Vol 128 (2) ◽  
pp. 357-366 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yanping Song ◽  
Fu Chen ◽  
Jun Yang ◽  
Zhongqi Wang

This paper is focused on the numerical investigation of boundary layer suction (BLS) via a slot on the suction surfaces of two compound lean compressor cascades with large camber angles as well as a conventional straight compressor cascade for comparison. The objective of the investigation is to study the influence of boundary layer suction on the performance of compound lean compressor cascades, thus to discuss the possibility of the application of boundary layer suction to improve their performance. An extensive numerical study has been carried out under different spanwise lengths, different axial positions of the slots, and different suction flow rates. The results show that the total loss of all three cascades is reduced significantly by boundary layer suction, and the largest reduction occurs at the highest suction flow rate. The axial locations of the slot have little effect on the total loss of the three cascades, which means the slots are opened within the optimal axial range in this case. The slot opened along the full span is the best one to obtain the largest reduction in total loss for all three cascades due to the alleviation of flow separation in the corner between the endwall and the suction surface. Moreover, the flow turning is increased, and pressure rise at the rear of the passage is recovered along the whole blade height via boundary layer suction along the full span, enhancing the working range of the highly loaded compressor cascades.


2021 ◽  
Vol 143 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tian Liang ◽  
Bo Liu ◽  
Stephen Spence

Abstract Control of corner separation in axial compressor blade rows has attracted much interest due to its potential to improve compressor efficiency and the energy utilization in turbomachinery. This paper investigates the effectiveness and mechanisms of boundary layer suction in controlling the corner separation of a highly loaded axial compressor cascade. Numerical simulations have been carried out to investigate the effect of different suction schemes on the loss downstream of the cascade and the change in incidence characteristics with the variation of the suction flowrate. The results show that the effectiveness of flow suction in controlling the flow separation depends heavily on the proportion of the blade for which it is applied. It was found that suction along part of the blade span on the suction surface could effectively remove the separation at the region of the span influenced by the suction slot. However, this resulted in a deterioration of the flow field at other parts of the span. The full-span suction scheme on the suction surface not only eliminated the separation of the boundary layer in the middle of the blade but also significantly improved the flow uniformity near the end-wall. Despite the improvement in flow uniformity using the full-span suction scheme, a three-dimensional (3D) corner separation still existed due to the strong cross-passage pressure gradient. To improve the flow field uniformity further, two combined suction schemes with one spanwise slot on the suction surface and another slot on the end-wall were designed in order to fully remove both the separated flow on the blade suction surface and the 3D corner separation. It was found that the total pressure loss coefficient was reduced significantly by 63.8% with suction flowrates of 1.88% and 0.82% for the slots on the suction surface and the end-wall, respectively. Further work showed that the behavior of the loss coefficient is different as the combination of suction flowrates is changed for different incidence. The cascade loss at high incidence operation can be more effectively reduced with suction control on the end-wall. When implementing combined suction, it is necessary to determine the best combination of suction flowrate according to the incidence level.


Author(s):  
Yanping Song ◽  
Fu Chen ◽  
Jun Yang ◽  
Zhongqi Wang

This paper is focused on the numerical investigation of boundary layer suction (BLS) via a slot on the suction surfaces of two compound lean compressor cascades with large camber angles as well as a conventional straight compressor cascade for comparison. The objective of the investigation is to study the influence of boundary layer suction on the performance of compound lean compressor cascades, thus to discuss the possibility of the application of boundary layer suction to improve their performance. An extensive numerical study has been carried out under different spanwise lengths and different axial positions of the slots, and different suction flow rates. The results show that the total loss of all three cascades is reduced significantly by boundary layer suction, and the largest reduction occurs at the highest suction flow rate. The axial locations of the slot have little effect on the total loss of the three cascades, which means the slots are opened within the optimal axial range in this case. The slot opened along the full span is the best one to obtain the largest reduction in total loss for all three cascades due to the alleviation of flow separation in the corner between the endwall and the suction surface. Moreover, the flow turning is increased, and pressure rise at the rear of the passage is recovered along the whole blade height via boundary layer suction along the full span, enhancing the working range of the highly loaded compressor cascades.


Author(s):  
Longxin Zhang ◽  
Shaowen Chen ◽  
Hao Xu ◽  
Jun Ding ◽  
Songtao Wang

Compared with suction slots, suction holes are (1) flexible in distribution; (2) alterable in size; (3) easy to fabricate and (4) high in strength. In this paper, the numerical and experimental studies for a high turning compressor cascade with suction air removed by using suction holes in the end-wall at a low Mach numbers are carried out. The main objective of the investigation is to study the influence of different suction distributions on the aerodynamic performance of the compressor cascade and to find a better compound suction scheme. A numerical model was first made and validated by comparing with the experimental results. The computed flow visualization and exit parameter distribution showed a good agreement with experimental data. Second, the model was then used to simulate the influence of different suction distributions on the aerodynamic performance of the compressor cascade. A better compound suction scheme was obtained by summarizing numerical results and tested in a low speed wind tunnel. As a result, the compound suction scheme can be used to significantly improve the performance of the compressor cascade because the corner separation gets further suppressed.


1986 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. Lakshminarayana ◽  
P. Popovski

A comprehensive study of the three-dimensional turbulent boundary layer on a compressor rotor blade at peak pressure rise coefficient is reported in this paper. The measurements were carried out at various chordwise and radial locations on a compressor rotor blade using a rotating miniature “V” configuration hot-wire probe. The data are compared with the measurement at the design condition. Substantial changes in the blade boundary layer characteristics are observed, especially in the outer sixteen percent of the blade span. The increased chordwise pressure gradient and the leakage flow at the peak pressure coefficient have a cumulative effect in increasing the boundary layer growth on the suction surface. The leakage flow has a beneficial effect on the pressure surface. The momentum and boundary layer thicknesses increase substantially from those at the design condition, especially near the outer radii of the suction surface.


Author(s):  
S. Friedrichs ◽  
H. P. Hodson ◽  
W. N. Dawes

This paper describes an investigation of the aerodynamic aspects of endwall film-cooling, in which the flow field downstream of a large-scale low-speed linear turbine cascade has been measured. The integrated losses and locations of secondary flow features with and without end wait film-cooling have been determined for variations of both the coolant supply pressure and injection location. Together with previous measurements of adiabatic film-cooling effectiveness and surface-flow visualisation, these results reveal the nature of the interactions between the ejected coolant and the flow in the blade passage. Measured hole massflows and a constant static pressure mixing analysis, together with the measured losses, allow the decomposition of the losses into three distinct entropy generation mechanisms: loss generation within the hole, loss generation due to the mixing of the coolant with the mainstream, and change in secondary loss generation in the blade passage. Results show that the loss generation within the coolant holes is substantial and that ejection into regions of low static pressure increases the loss per unit coolant massflow. Ejection upstream of the three-dimensional separation lines on the endwall changes secondary flow and reduces its associated losses. The results show that it is necessary to take the three-dimensional nature of the endwall flow into account in the design of endwall film-cooling configurations.


Author(s):  
Hua-wei Lu ◽  
Yi Yang ◽  
Shang Guo ◽  
Yu-xuan Huang ◽  
Hong Wang ◽  
...  

The flow characteristics and loss behavior over an array of parallel recessed dimples on a high turning linear compressor cascade have been investigated using the Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes approach. Steady simulations have been carried out at three dimple locations of 10–32%, 38–60%, 60–82% chord length of suction surface with the inlet Mach number of 0.7. Flow conditions were compared in exit loss coefficient, static pressure rise, streamline patterns, vortex structures, boundary layer parameters, and blade surface pressure between the smooth and the modified cascades. The results indicate that the dimples prior to the separation line report an overall enhancement in the aerodynamic performance in comparison to that of a smooth blade. Symmetric spanwise vortex, which energizes the boundary layer, can roll up inside the dimples. Therefore, the boundary layer with the higher momentum can bear the adverse pressure gradient, which will suppress the flow separation and associated losses. Three dimpled configurations can all eliminate the separation bubble on the suction side, but the dimples located at 60–82% chord length take the negative effect on the aerodynamic performance due to the more chaos condition in the corner separation region. The comparison results also indicate that the optimum location of dimples may exist in front of the separation bubble. Loss reduction of 18.8% and 10.8% can be achieved under the 10–32% c and 38–60% c dimple configurations, respectively.


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