scholarly journals Interpreting Aerodynamics of a Transonic Impeller from Static Pressure Measurements

2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Fangyuan Lou ◽  
John Charles Fabian ◽  
Nicole Leanne Key

This paper investigates the aerodynamics of a transonic impeller using static pressure measurements. The impeller is a high-speed, high-pressure-ratio wheel used in small gas turbine engines. The experiment was conducted on the single stage centrifugal compressor facility in the compressor research laboratory at Purdue University. Data were acquired from choke to near-surge at four different corrected speeds (Nc) from 80% to 100% design speed, which covers both subsonic and supersonic inlet conditions. Details of the impeller flow field are discussed using data acquired from both steady and time-resolved static pressure measurements along the impeller shroud. The flow field is compared at different loading conditions, from subsonic to supersonic inlet conditions. The impeller performance was strongly dependent on the inducer, where the majority of relative diffusion occurs. The inducer diffuses flow more efficiently for inlet tip relative Mach numbers close to unity, and the performance diminishes at other Mach numbers. Shock waves emerging upstream of the impeller leading edge were observed from 90% to 100% corrected speed, and they move towards the impeller trailing edge as the inlet tip relative Mach number increases. There is no shock wave present in the inducer at 80% corrected speed. However, a high-loss region near the inducer throat was observed at 80% corrected speed resulting in a lower impeller efficiency at subsonic inlet conditions.

Author(s):  
Fangyuan Lou ◽  
Douglas R. Matthews ◽  
Nicholas J. Kormanik ◽  
Nicole L. Key

Abstract In the previous part of the paper, a novel method to reconstruct the compressor non-uniform circumferential flow field using spatially under-sampled data points is developed. In this part of the paper, the method is applied to two compressor research articles to further demonstrate the potential of the novel method in resolving the important flow features associated with these circumferential non-uniformities. In the first experiment, the static pressure field at the leading edge of a vaned diffuser in a high-speed centrifugal compressor is reconstructed using pressure readings from nine static pressure taps placed on the hub of the diffuser. The magnitude and phase information for the first three dominant wavelets are characterized. Additionally, the method shows significant advantages over the traditional averaging methods for calculating repeatable mean values of the static pressure. While using the multi-wavelet approximation method, the errors in the mean static pressure with one dropout measurement are 70% less than the pitchwise-averaging method. In the second experiment, the full-annulus total pressure field downstream of Stator 2 in a three-stage axial compressor is reconstructed from a small segment of data representing 20% coverage of the annulus. Results show very good agreement between the reconstructed total pressure profile and the experiment at a variety of spanwise locations from near hub to near shroud. The features associated with blade-row interactions accounting for passage-to-passage variations are resolved in the reconstructed total pressure profile.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Fangyuan Lou ◽  
Nicholas J. Kormanik III ◽  
Douglas Matthews ◽  
Nicole L. Key

Abstract In the previous part of the paper, a novel method to reconstruct the compressor non-uniform circumferential flow field using spatially under-sampled data points is developed. In this part of the paper, the method is applied to two compressor research articles to further demonstrate the potential of the novel method in resolving the important flow features associated with these circumferential non-uniformities. In the first experiment, the static pressure field at the leading edge of a vaned diffuser in a high-speed centrifugal compressor is reconstructed using pressure readings from nine static pressure taps placed on the hub of the diffuser. The magnitude and phase information for the first three dominant wavelets are characterized. Additionally, the method shows significant advantages over the traditional averaging methods for calculating repeatable mean values of the static pressure. While using the multi-wavelet approximation method, the errors in the mean static pressure with one dropout measurement are 70% less than the pitchwise-averaging method. In the second experiment, the full-annulus total pressure field downstream of Rotor 2 in a three-stage axial compressor is reconstructed from a small segment of data representing 20% coverage of the annulus. Results show very good agreement between the reconstructed total pressure profile and the experiment at a variety of spanwise locations from near hub to near shroud. The features associated with blade-row interactions accounting for passage-to-passage variations are resolved in the reconstructed total pressure profile.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryosuke Seki ◽  
Satoshi Yamashita ◽  
Ryosuke Mito

Abstract The aerodynamic effects of a probe for stage performance evaluation in a high-speed axial compressor are investigated. Regarding the probe measurement accuracy and its aerodynamic effects, the upstream/downstream effects on the probe and probe insertion effects are studied by using an unsteady computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis and by verifying in two types of multistage high-speed axial compressor measurements. The probe traverse measurements were conducted at the stator inlet and outlet in each case to evaluate blade row performance quantitatively and its flow field. In the past study, the simple approximation method was carried out which considered only the interference of the probe effect based on the reduction of the mass flow by the probe blockage for the compressor performance, but it did not agree well with the measured results. In order to correctly and quantitatively grasp the mechanism of the flow field when the probe is inserted, the unsteady calculation including the probe geometry was carried out in the present study. Unsteady calculation was performed with a probe inserted completely between the rotor and stator of a 4-stage axial compressor. Since the probe blockage and potential flow field, which mean the pressure change region induced by the probe, change the operating point of the upstream rotor and increase the work of the rotor. Compared the measurement result with probe to a kiel probe setting in the stator leading edge, the total pressure was increased about 2,000Pa at the probe tip. In addition, the developed wake by the probe interferes with the downstream stator row and locally changes the static pressure at the stator exit. To evaluate the probe insertion effect, unsteady calculations with probe at three different immersion heights at the stator downstream in an 8-stage axial compressor are performed. The static pressure value of the probe tip was increased about 3,000Pa in the hub region compared to tip region, this increase corresponds to the measurement trend. On the other hand, the measured wall static pressure showed that there is no drastic change in the radial direction. In addition, when the probe is inserted from the tip to hub region in the measurement, the blockage induced by the probe was increased. As a result, operating point of the stator was locally changed, and the rise of static pressure of the stator increased when the stator incidence changed. These typical results show that unsteady simulations including probe geometry can accurately evaluate the aerodynamic effects of probes in the high-speed axial compressor. Therefore, since the probe will pinpointed and strong affects the practically local flow field in all rotor upstream passage and stator downstream, as for the probe measurement, it is important to pay attention to design the probe diameter, the distance from the blade row, and its relative position to the downstream stator. From the above investigations, a newly simple approximation method which includes the effect of the pressure change evaluation by the probe is proposed, and it is verified in the 4-stage compressor case as an example. In this method, the effects of the distance between the rotor trailing edge (T.E.) and the probe are considered by the theory of the incompressible two-dimensional potential flow. The probe blockage decreases the mass flow rate and changes the operating point of the compressor. The verification results conducted in real compressor indicate that the correct blockage approximation enables designer to estimate aerodynamic effects of the probe correctly.


Author(s):  
Adam R. Hickman ◽  
Scott C. Morris

Flow field measurements of a high-speed axial compressor are presented during pre-stall and post-stall conditions. The paper provides an analysis of measurements from a circumferential array of unsteady shroud static pressure sensors during stall cell development. At low-speed, the stall cell approached a stable size in approximately two rotor revolutions. At higher speeds, the stall cell developed within a short amount of time after stall inception, but then fluctuated in circumferential extent as the compressor transiently approached a stable post-stall operating point. The size of the stall cell was found to be related to the annulus average flow coefficient. A discussion of Phase-Locked Average (PLA) statistics on flow field measurements during stable operation is also included. In conditions where rotating stall is present, flow field measurements can be Double Phase-Locked Averaged (DPLA) using a once-per-revolution (1/Rev) pulse and the period of the stall cell. The DPLA method provides greater detail and understanding into the structure of the stall cell. DPLA data indicated that a stalled compressor annulus can be considered to contained three main regions: over-pressurized passages, stalled passages, and recovering passages. Within the over-pressured region, rotor passages exhibited increased blade loading and pressure ratio compared to pre-stall values.


2004 ◽  
Vol 126 (3) ◽  
pp. 333-338 ◽  
Author(s):  
Axel Fischer ◽  
Walter Riess ◽  
Joerg R. Seume

The FVV sponsored project “Bow Blading” (cf. acknowledgments) at the Turbomachinery Laboratory of the University of Hannover addresses the effect of strongly bowed stator vanes on the flow field in a four-stage high-speed axial compressor with controlled diffusion airfoil (CDA) blading. The compressor is equipped with more strongly bowed vanes than have previously been reported in the literature. The performance map of the present compressor is being investigated experimentally and numerically. The results show that the pressure ratio and the efficiency at the design point and at the choke limit are reduced by the increase in friction losses on the surface of the bowed vanes, whose surface area is greater than that of the reference (CDA) vanes. The mass flow at the choke limit decreases for the same reason. Because of the change in the radial distribution of axial velocity, pressure rise shifts from stage 3 to stage 4 between the choke limit and maximum pressure ratio. Beyond the point of maximum pressure ratio, this effect is not distinguishable from the reduction of separation by the bow of the vanes. Experimental results show that in cases of high aerodynamic loading, i.e., between maximum pressure ratio and the stall limit, separation is reduced in the bowed stator vanes so that the stagnation pressure ratio and efficiency are increased by the change to bowed stators. It is shown that the reduction of separation with bowed vanes leads to a increase of static pressure rise towards lower mass flow so that the present bow bladed compressor achieves higher static pressure ratios at the stall limit.


Author(s):  
Xi Yang ◽  
Dong-hai Jin ◽  
Xing-min Gui

Pipe diffuser draws more attentions these years as the stage pressure ratio and loads grow, since it is known that the pipe diffuser has a superior performance to the traditional vane diffuser as the diffuser inlet flow field is transonic or supersonic. Generally speaking, when the pressure ratio is high enough to give rise to the emergence of a critical cross-section, it would usually be in the diffuser, closing to the leading edge other than in the impeller. Therefore, the diffuser would have a significant impact on stage choke margin and its performance while be difficult to design and to match the impeller with satisfaction. To address the problem, a preliminary geometry design method for pipe diffuser is presented in this paper. In this paper, the performance and flow field analysis are based on numerical simulation carried out by Numeca, a commercial simulation software. For verified the calculated results′ reliability and grid independence, corresponding calculations and comparisons are conducted and discussed. Then, the performance of stage with pipe diffuser is compared with the stage with vane diffuser. Next, the specific effects of incidence on the performance and flow field are analyzed and discussed respectively. At last, an optimized aerodynamic structure of pipe diffuser is presented. As shown in the CFD results, the stage peak isentropic efficiency can reach up to 83.65% with the stage total pressure ratio slightly increased from 6.50 to 6.78, which means 4.29% of isentropic efficiency was raised by substituting the pipe diffuser for the vane diffuser.


Author(s):  
Wenrui Bao ◽  
Ce Yang ◽  
Li Fu ◽  
Changmao Yang ◽  
Lucheng Ji

Abstract An asymmetric structure of volute in a supercritical carbon dioxide centrifugal compressor induces a non-uniform circumferential distribution of the upstream flow field, which inevitably affects the formation of a two-phase region of carbon dioxide in an impeller. In this work, unsteady simulations for centrifugal compressors were conducted. First, the influence of low static strip induced by low static pressure near volute tongue on the impeller flow field was presented. Then, the non-uniform flow field distribution in the impeller passages and flow characteristics of the passages at the impeller inlet were obtained. Finally, the two-phase regions in the impeller were presented. The results demonstrate that for a centrifugal compressor with volute, the two-phase region appears not only on the suction surface of the leading edge of the blade, but also in some impeller passages, on the pressure surface of the blade near the leading edge, and in the leading edge and mid-chord of tip clearance, under the design conditions. The low static pressure strip induced by the volute leads to a high-speed region in the impeller passages where the temperature and pressure of supercritical carbon dioxide fall below the critical point and carbon dioxide enters the two-phase region. Meanwhile, the static pressure on the blade surface is distorted under the influence of a high-speed region in the passages, resulting in the formation of a two-phase region at the tip clearance. The flow distortion of passages at the impeller inlet results in the appearance of two-phase regions on the both sides of leading edge of the blade. The dryness on the suction side of the blade leading edge and the leading edge of the tip clearance is lower, which indicated that the proportion of liquid-phase carbon dioxide is higher in these two-phase regions.


Author(s):  
Joachim Kurzke

Realistic compressor maps are the key to high quality gas turbine performance calculations. When modeling the performance of an existing engine then these maps are usually not known and must be approximated by adapting maps from literature to either measured data or to other available information. There are many publications describing map adaptation processes, simple ones and more sophisticated physically based scaling rules. There are also reports about using statistics, genetic algorithms, neural networks and even morphing techniques for re-engineering compressor maps. This type of methods does not consider the laws of physics and consequently the generated maps are valid at best in the region in which they have been calibrated. This region is frequently very narrow, especially in case of gas generator compressors which run in steady state always on a single operating line. This paper describes which physical phenomena influence the shape of speed and efficiency lines in compressor maps. For machines operating at comparatively low speeds (so that the flow into each stage is subsonic), there is usually considerable range between choke and stall corrected flow. As the speed of the machine is increased the range narrows. For high-speed stages with supersonic relative flow into the rotor the efficiency maximum is where the speed line turns over from vertical to lower than maximum corrected flow. At this operating condition the shock is about to detach from the leading edge of the blades. The flow at a certain speed can also be limited by choking in the compressor exit guide vanes. For high pressure ratio single stage centrifugal compressors this is a normal case, but it can also happen with low pressure ratio multistage boosters of turbofan engines, for example. If the compressor chokes at the exit, then the specific work remains constant along the speed line while the overall pressure ratio varies and that generates a very specific shape of the efficiency contour lines in the map. Also in other parts of the map, the efficiency varies along speed lines in a systematic manner. Peculiar shapes of specific work and corrected torque lines can reveal physically impossibilities that are difficult to see in the standard compressor map pictures. Compressor maps generated without considering the inherent physical phenomena can easily result in misleading performance calculations if used at operating conditions outside of the region where they have been calibrated. Whatever map adaptation method is used: the maps created in such a way should be checked thoroughly for violations of the underlying laws of compressor physics.


Entropy ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (12) ◽  
pp. 1372
Author(s):  
Mingming Zhang ◽  
Anping Hou

In order to explore the inducing factors and mechanism of the non-synchronous vibration, the flow field structure and its formation mechanism in the non-synchronous vibration state of a high speed turbocompressor are discussed in this paper, based on the fluid–structure interaction method. The predicted frequencies fBV (4.4EO), fAR (9.6EO) in the field have a good correspondence with the experimental data, which verify the reliability and accuracy of the numerical method. The results indicate that, under a deviation in the adjustment of inlet guide vane (IGV), the disturbances of pressure in the tip diffuse upstream and downstream, and maintain the corresponding relationship with the non-synchronous vibration frequency of the blade. An instability flow that developed at the tip region of 90% span emerged due to interactions among the incoming main flow, the axial separation backflow, and the tip leakage vortices. The separation vortices in the blade passage mixed up with the tip leakage flow reverse at the trailing edge of blade tip, presenting a spiral vortex structure which flows upstream to the leading edge of the adjacent blade. The disturbances of the spiral vortexes emerge to rotate at 54.5% of the rotor speed in the same rotating direction as a modal oscillation. The blade vibration in the turbocompressor is found to be related to the unsteadiness of the tip flow. The large pressure oscillation caused by the movement of the spiral vortex is regarded as the one of the main drivers for the non-synchronous vibration for the present turbocompressor, besides the deviation in the adjustment of IGV.


2013 ◽  
Vol 135 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Subenuka Sivagnanasundaram ◽  
Stephen Spence ◽  
Juliana Early ◽  
Bahram Nikpour

This paper describes an investigation of map width enhancement and a detailed analysis of the inducer flow field due to various bleed slot configurations and vanes in the annular cavity of a turbocharger centrifugal compressor. The compressor under investigation is used in a turbocharger application for a heavy duty diesel engine of approximately 400 hp. This investigation has been undertaken using a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model of the full compressor stage, which includes a manual multiblock-structured grid generation method. The influence of the bleed slot flow on the inducer flow field at a range of operating conditions has been analyzed, highlighting the improvement in surge and choked flow capability. The impact of the bleed slot geometry variations and the inclusion of cavity vanes on the inlet incidence angle have been studied in detail by considering the swirl component introduced at the leading edge by the recirculating flow through the slot. Further, the overall stage efficiency and the nonuniform flow field at the inducer inlet have been also analyzed. The analysis revealed that increasing the slot width has increased the map width by about 17%. However, it has a small impact on the efficiency, due to the frictional and mixing losses. Moreover, adding vanes in the cavity improved the pressure ratio and compressor performance noticeably. A detail analysis of the compressor with cavity vanes has also been presented.


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