Mechanism investigation of enhancing the stability of an axial flow rotor by blade angle slots

Author(s):  
Haoguang Zhang ◽  
Wenhao Liu ◽  
Enhao Wang ◽  
Yanhui Wu ◽  
Weidong Yao

This paper seeks to reveal the mechanisms of enhancing the stability of a subsonic axial flow rotor by applying blade angle slots casing treatment (BSCT). When blade angle slots are applied, there is about 9% stall margin improvement for the experiment and about 8% stall margin improvement for the calculation, but the decrease in the rotor maximum efficiency is about 11% for the experiment and the calculation. The compared results between smooth wall and blade angle slots indicate that the backflow in the rotor top passage is weakened by the injected and sucked flows formed inside the slots of BSCT. Moreover, the injected flows inside the slots interfere with the flows in the rotor passage upstream, and this interference leads to large flow losses. Therefore, the rotor efficiency for blade angle slots is much lower than that for smooth wall. To confirm that the structural optimization of blade angle slots can effectively improve the compressor stability with small efficiency losses, optimized blade angle slots casing treatment (BSCT1) was designed according to the past experience of slot casing treatment. The calculated result shows that the optimized blade angle slots generate about 59% stall margin improvement, and the compressor maximum efficiency with the optimized blade angle slots is about 0.05% more than that for smooth wall. The flow field analyses show that the strong sucked flows formed inside the slots for BSCT1 can prevent the backflow, which exists in the rotor top passage for BSCT, from appearing. In addition, the level of interference of the flows in the rotor passage upstream for BSCT1 is much lower than that for BSCT, and the corresponding losses with BSCT1 become lower. Therefore, the rotor with BSCT1 has a larger stable operating range and better efficiencies than that with BSCT.

Author(s):  
M. Akhlaghi ◽  
R. L. Elder ◽  
K. W. Ramsden

The objective of the current study was to investigate the effect of casing treatment on a multistage axial flow compressor. The main purpose of the investigation was to extend the range and operability of multistage axial compressors. The study seeks to establish whether a vane-recessed tubular-passage casing-treatment could provide beneficial stall margin improvement, without sacrificing the efficiencies of the compressor with the restricted space available for the treatment. A casing treatment that consisted of three parts: an outer casing ring, with a tubular shaped passage on the inside, a set of 120 evenly spaced curved vanes, and then a shroud or inner ring was developed from two initial designs. The casing treatment, manufactured from high quality acrylic, was positioned upstream and partly covering the tip of the first stage rotor blades. The casing treatment was tested on the first stage of a three-stage low-speed compressor with inlet guide vanes with the rear two stages removed. The rotor blade tip axial chord exposure had a significant impact on the effectiveness of the casing treatment. Seven compressor configuration incorporating casing treatments of 23.2%, 33.3%, 43.4%, 53.5%, 63.6%, 73.7% and 83.8% rotor exposure were tested. The results showed significant improvements in stall margin in all exposures and insignificant efficiency sacrifices in some exposures. Nearly 29% of stall margin improvement in terms of the corrected mass flow rate was achieved with 33.3% rotor blade tip axial chord exposure. The compressor build with 53.5% rotor exposure was the best configuration in terms of maximum efficiency gain. In terms of peak pressure rise coefficients the compressor configuration with a casing treatment of 63.6% exposure was the best design. The results also suggest that the vane-recessed tubular-passage casing treatment designed as part of this research, in most instances enabled the stall conditions in the compressor to become progressive rather than abrupt.


Aerospace ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 12
Author(s):  
Marco Porro ◽  
Richard Jefferson-Loveday ◽  
Ernesto Benini

This work focuses its attention on possibilities to enhance the stability of an axial compressor using a casing treatment technique. Circumferential grooves machined into the case are considered and their performances evaluated using three-dimensional steady state computational simulations. The effects of rectangular and new T-shape grooves on NASA Rotor 37 performances are investigated, resolving in detail the flow field near the blade tip in order to understand the stall inception delay mechanism produced by the casing treatment. First, a validation of the computational model was carried out analysing a smooth wall case without grooves. The comparisons of the total pressure ratio, total temperature ratio and adiabatic efficiency profiles with experimental data highlighted the accuracy and validity of the model. Then, the results for a rectangular groove chosen as the baseline case demonstrated that the groove interacts with the tip leakage flow, weakening the vortex breakdown and reducing the separation at the blade suction side. These effects delay stall inception, improving compressor stability. New T-shape grooves were designed keeping the volume as a constant parameter and their performances were evaluated in terms of stall margin improvement and efficiency variation. All the configurations showed a common efficiency loss near the peak condition and some of them revealed a stall margin improvement with respect to the baseline. Due to their reduced depth, these new configurations are interesting because they enable the use of a thinner light-weight compressor case as is desirable in aerospace applications.


Author(s):  
M. Ziabasharhagh ◽  
A. B. McKenzie ◽  
R. L. Elder

An experimental investigation has been carried out on the influence of a vaned recessed casing treatment on the stall margin improvement of axial flow fans with different hub to tip ratio, with and without inlet distortion. The inlet distortion tests were conducted on a 0.5 hub to tip ratio fan and significant increases in the flow range with only small drops in operating efficiency were observed. The clean flow tests were conducted on higher hub to tip ratio fans (0.7 and 0.9). In each case the stage characteristic was compared with the results obtained with a solid casing. Significant increases in the flow range, with only modest or no loss in operating efficiency, were observed for optimum configurations at both diameter ratios.


Author(s):  
Tim Houghton ◽  
Ivor Day

This paper concerns the optimisation of casing grooves and the important influence of stall inception mechanism on groove performance. Installing casing grooves is a well known technique for improving the stable operating range of a compressor, but the wide-spread use of grooves is restricted by the loss of efficiency and flow capacity. In this paper, laboratory tests are used to examine the conditions under which casing treatment can be used to greatest effect. The use of a single casing groove was investigated in a recently published companion paper. The current work extends this to multiple-groove treatments and considers their performance in relation to stall inception mechanisms. Here it is shown that the stall margin gain from multiple grooves is less than the sum of the gains if the grooves were used individually. By contrast, the loss of efficiency is additive as the number of grooves increases. It is then shown that casing grooves give the greatest stall margin improvement when used in a compressor which exhibits spike-type stall inception, while modal activity before stall can dramatically reduce the effectiveness of the grooves. This finding highlights the importance of being able to predict the stall inception mechanism which might occur in a given compressor before and after grooves are added. Some published prediction techniques are therefore examined, but found wanting. Lastly, it is shown that casing grooves can, in some cases, be used to remove rotor blades and produce a more efficient, stable and light-weight rotor.


Author(s):  
HaoGuang Zhang ◽  
XuDong Zhang ◽  
YanHui Wu ◽  
WuLi Chu ◽  
HaiYang Kuang

The objective of this study is to evaluate the effect of cross-blade slot casing treatment on the stability and performance of an axial flow compressor rotor. The experimental and unsteady calculated results both show that cross-blade slot casing treatment can generate about 22% stall margin improvement, and the compressor peak efficiency is reduced by about 13%. The detailed flow-field analyses indicate that the sucked and injected flow caused by the slots of cross-blade slot casing treatment can restrain the rotor tip passage blockage, which is made by the low energy tip clearance leakage vortex. When cross-blade slot casing treatment is applied, not only the rotor wheel flange work becomes lower in most of the rotor blade span, but also the flow loss in the blade tip passage becomes fairly large due to the strong interaction between the mainstream and the injected flows made by the slots. As a result, the compressor total pressure ratio and efficiency for cross-blade slot casing treatment are reduced obviously. Three kinds of new cross-blade slot casing treatment were designed according to the previous successful experience and investigated in this paper. The numerical results show that the new three cross-blade slot casing treatments both generate about 54% stall margin improvement at the cost of minor peak efficiency. For one new cross-blade slot casing treatment (CSCT2), the compressor peak efficiency is reduced by about 0.3%. The low energy TLV, which is present for cross-blade slot casing treatment, is removed by the strong sucked flow made by CSCT2. Moreover, the interaction between the mainstream and the injected flows caused by CSCT2 becomes weak obviously, and the corresponding flow loss is reduced greatly. Hence, the compressor stability and performance with CSCT2 are higher than those with cross-blade slot casing treatment.


Author(s):  
C. S. Kang ◽  
A. B. McKenzie ◽  
R. L. Elder

An experimental investigation to examine the influence of the vaned recess casing treatment on stall margin, operating efficiency and the flow field of a low speed axial flow fan with aerospace type blade loading is presented. Different geometrical designs of the vaned passages were examined. The best configuration resulted in a stall margin improvement of 67%, a significantly higher pressure rise in the stall region and insignificant change in peak efficiency. Detailed 3-D flow measurements in the endwall region and in the casing recess were carried out with a slanted hot-wire, providing some insight to the operation of the device. The results revealed that the stall margin improvement was largely due to the removal of flow from the blade tip to the recess, and the elimination of the growth of the stall region at the tip, which occurs at stall in the solid casing build.


2011 ◽  
Vol 134 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Houghton ◽  
Ivor Day

This paper concerns the optimization of casing grooves and the important influence of stall inception mechanism on groove performance. Installing casing grooves is a well known technique for improving the stable operating range of a compressor, but the wide-spread use of grooves is restricted by the loss of efficiency and flow capacity. In this paper, laboratory tests are used to examine the conditions under which casing treatment can be used to greatest effect. The use of a single casing groove was investigated in a recently published companion paper. The current work extends this to multiple-groove treatments and considers their performance in relation to stall inception mechanisms. Here it is shown that the stall margin gain from multiple grooves is less than the sum of the gains if the grooves were used individually. By contrast, the loss of efficiency is additive as the number of grooves increases. It is then shown that casing grooves give the greatest stall margin improvement when used in a compressor, that exhibits spike-type stall inception, while modal activity before stall can dramatically reduce the effectiveness of the grooves. This finding highlights the importance of being able to predict which stall inception mechanism might occur in a given compressor before and after grooves are added. Some published prediction techniques are therefore examined, but found wanting. Lastly, it is shown that casing grooves can, in some cases, be used to remove rotor blades and produce a more efficient, stable, and light-weight rotor.


Author(s):  
A. Ghila ◽  
A. Tourlidakis

This paper presents a computational investigation of flows in a single axial flow fan with and without casing treatment. It analyses the effect of the recess casing treatment on stall margin improvement as well as its influence on global performance parameters. The paper seeks to offer a contribution to the understanding of the physical processes occurring when approaching stall and the working mechanism by which casing treatments improve stall margin. A Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes CFD code was used for the analysis and the numerical investigation of the overall performance, efficiency and work-input characteristics of the fan were found to agree very well with previously reported experimental results. The effect of casing treatment was investigated using two types of configurations, vaneless and vaned casing. The vaneless casing treatment produced a sizeable stall margin improvement with negligible loss of efficiency. The recess was fitted later with vanes and was shown to offer both a further stall margin improvement and an increase in the pressure rise coefficient without any significant drop in efficiency at design conditions.


1977 ◽  
Vol 99 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-133 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Takata ◽  
Y. Tsukuda

Experiments on the effect of casing treatment were carried out using low-speed axial-flow compressors. Results on the overall compressor performance and on the flow through the blade row as well as the flow within the treatment slots are presented. Then, based on the experiments, a possible mechanism of the stall margin improvement is suggested.


Author(s):  
Dilipkumar B. Alone ◽  
Subramani Satish Kumar ◽  
Shobhavathy Thimmaiah ◽  
Janaki Rami Reddy Mudipalli ◽  
A. M. Pradeep ◽  
...  

Bend skewed casing treatment was designed to improve the stable operating range of single stage transonic axial flow compressor and also to understand the effects of its plenum chamber volume on the performance. This paper presents the original experimental research work undertaken to study the effect of plenum chamber depth and thus its volume on the performance of single stage transonic axial flow compressor coupled with the bend skewed casing treatment. The bend skewed casing treatment with porosity of 33% was selected for the present experimental study. The bend skewed casing treatment has slot width equal to the maximum thickness of the rotor blade. The casing treatment geometry has an axial front segment and a 45° staggered rear segment following the blade tip stagger. Both the segments were skewed by 45° in the radial plane, in such a way that the flow emerging from the casing slots would do so with swirl contrary to the direction of rotor rotation. The plenum chamber which can also be called as stagnation zone exists above the skewed slots. The plenum chamber has an axial length equal to the axial length of the casing treatment slots. The maximum depth of the plenum chamber was 11 mm and which was equal to the depth of bend skewed casing slots. The depth of plenum chamber was varied from zero, half the slot depth, and equal to slot depth in order to get variable volume. The porosity and axial location of the casing treatment relative to the rotor tip chord were chosen from the earlier experimental programs on effect of bend skewed casing treatment porosities and axial coverages for the present compressor stage. Optimum performance of the transonic compressor stage was obtained at 20% and 40% axial coverages and for 33% porosity configurations. The axial coverages of 20% and 40% were chosen for the present study to understand the effects of plenum chamber volume on the performance of single stage transonic axial flow compressor. The performance of the compressor stage with solid casing and casing treatment with different plenum volume was obtained and compared at different operating speeds. The compressor performance was derived for the fixed casing treatment porosity of 33% and for three different configurations of plenum chamber volumes at two different axial coverages. Experimental investigations reveal that the plenum chamber volume does have an impact on the stable operating range of the compressor. The compressor stall margin improves with increase in the plenum chamber volume. Bend skewed casing treatment coupled with plenum chamber of depths equal to the slots depth results in maximum stall margin improvement of 37.62% as compared to 26.40% without plenum chamber over the solid casing at 40% axial coverage. For this combination 0.8% improvement in the peak stage efficiency above the solid casing was noticed at 60% design speed.


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