Accepted Manuscript

Research Paper

Impact of Inlet Distortion on Turbocharger Compressor Stage Performance

Ben Zhao, Harold Sun, Leilei Wang, Manxiang Song

PII: S1359-4311(17)31857-4
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2017.05.181
Reference: ATE 10496

To appear in: Applied Thermal Engineering

Received Date: 19 March 2017

Accepted Date: 29 May 2017

Please cite this article as: B. Zhao, H. Sun, L. Wang, M. Song, Impact of Inlet Distortion on Turbocharger
Compressor Stage Performance, Applied Thermal Engineering (2017), doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/
j.applthermaleng.2017.05.181

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 Impact of Inlet Distortion on Turbocharger Compressor Stage
Performance

Ben Zhao1, Harold Sun1, Leilei Wang2, Manxiang Song3

1.Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, 100081, P.R. China
2.Hebei University of Engineering, Handan, Hebei, 056038, P.R. China
3.Beihang University, Beiing, 100083, P.R. China

Abstract:
In a turbocharger system, curved pipes are usually used to connect compressors with other parts due to limited
packaging space. It is well known that an elbow can generate flow distortion to and interact with the compressor
inducer and therefore deteriorate compressor stage performance. The compressor efficiency change may vary with
relative positions of inlet elbow and volute. The compressor’s stable flow range is also possible to vary due to the shift
of surge and/or chock points. In this paper, eight relative circumferential positions between the inlet elbow and the
volute were studied by 3D numerical simulations with experimental validations. The numerical results confirm that
adjusting the inlet bend from one circumferential orientation to others does cause an obvious deviation in the
compressor aerodynamic efficiency. The result also indicates that the total pressure deficit and the vortices at the
compressor inlet are the main contributors to the compressor operating range. With the numerical findings in this paper
which was validated by experimental measurements, it is suggested that unfavorable orientations of an elbow relative to
volute should be avoided in an intake system.

Keywords: turbocharger compressor; inlet distortion; performance; circumferential positions

1 Introduction
As emission standards for an internal combustion engine(IC engine) are becoming more stringent and engine
downsizing is becoming more and more important, one of the potential methods is to use a turbocharger that consists of
a radial turbine and a centrifugal compressor and transfers energy from exhaust gas to fresh air. To meet requirements of
high pressure ratio, two-stage turbocharging may be needed including two centrifugal compressors that often need to
work with some inlet curved pipes before the high pressure stage compressor. Therefore, it is necessary to study the
effect of the inlet distortion induced by bent pipes on a turbocharger compressor.
Under the influence of centrifugal force the air flow field inside an elbow may have distorted distribution of flow
parameters at the elbow exit. This sort of distortion mostly includes two counter rotating cells, the so-called Dean
vortices[1]. Kim et al[2] indicated that the swirl intensity decreases exponentially along the flow after the elbow,
dissipating quickly as the radius of the elbow curvature is larger. The distortion induced by some curved pipes often
includes distorted pressure in addition to the swirl distortion. The realistic distortion of this sort, therefore, is more
complicated.
As an elbow is used at the compressor inlet, the compressor is hard to avoid the distorted flow. Han et al[3]
investigated an industrial centrifugal compressor with different radial inlets and indicated that the inlet distortions


Corresponding author
E-mail address: wangll@hebeu.edu.cn
1
negatively affect aerodynamic performance of the compressor. The flow distortion from the elbow exit mainly
influences the impeller performance by having non-uniform flow angle distribution at the inducer and non-uniform total
pressure distribution in the blade passages, which cause incidences, boundary layer separation and possibly impeller
stall for the compressor [4].
Even if the compressor operates with uniform inlet conditions, its internal flow field is no longer axisymmetric
because of volute’s impact. As the amplitude of volute-induced distortion increased, the non-axisymmetric character is
reinforced in diffuser, and then flow separation appears and increases in certain positions in the diffuser [5]. This
phenomenon deteriorates the efficiency of a centrifugal compressor. Zheng et al[6] reported that the efficiency variation
of a compressor stage is up to 4 percent, according to steady simulations.
In the case of a compressor with inlet elbow, the volute’s impact sometimes couples with the effect of the inlet
elbow so that the compressor performance penalty and the distorted flow between impeller channels further deteriorate.
And those variations may change with the matching state of both effects and operation points of the compressor. The
previous work[7] revealed that a turbocharger centrifugal compressor efficiency varies with the relative position between
upstream inlet elbow and downstream volute, as shown in Figure 1. The efficiency variation is similar with the clocking
effect which was first studied on an axial compressor by Walker et al. [8] and then has been closely investigated in a
multi-stage turbomachinery by many other researchers[9-13] in the past few decades by changing relative positions of two
impellers with focusing on aerodynamic interactions between impeller rows[14].
Although the compressor efficiency penalty was reported due to the use of elbows at the compressor inlet, the
whole compressor map with the different setting angle of the inlet elbow relative to downstream volute is not full y
understood. Besides the compressor efficiency, the stable operating range, one of key parameters for turbocharger
matching, may vary with the installation angle of the elbow. Additionally, the potential physical mechanism still needs
to be understood in detail because of its importance for advanced intake system design.
In this paper, a turbocharger compressor with 90° elbow in which the bend is respectively located at 8
circumferential positions relative to the volute were modeled and numerically simulated. The predicted performances
were compared with each other and the internal flow field was analyzed in detail. And the tested data supports the
numerical results. The findings, therefore, can provide some guidance for boosting system design in a turbocharged
engine.

2 Research model
The centrifugal compressor used in the current research is from a production turbocharger and consists of 14
blades, 7 main blades and 7 splitter blades. Its design speed and flow rate are 80 krpm and 0.28 kg·s-1, respectively.
More detailed geometry parameters of the compressor can be found in reference[15].
The 90° elbow is used to create a flow distortion at the compressor inlet, which has the same diameter as the inlet
of inducer. The distance from the inducer to the elbow exit is about 1.2 times of the diameter of the pipe. And, in order
to reduce the impact of boundary conditions on internal flow, straight pipes (not shown in this paper) were added at both
inlet and outlet of the numerical model(not shown in this paper).
Eight circumferential positions of the inlet bend relative to downstream volute were modeled, as shown in Figure 2,
and their performances were predicted by 3D numerical simulations. The circumferential orientation was defined
according to its positon relative to the volute, as Figure 3 describes.

3 Numerical scheme
A commercial CFD software, NEMECA, version of 89.1, was employed to discretize the computational domain
and to solve steady RANS equations.
3.1 Computational mesh
Impeller mesh was automatically generated by a mesh generator, Autogrid5 which is embedded into the IGG
module of FINE/Turbo package of NUMECA software. A special technology, bulb control, was applied for impeller
2
bulb to improve the quality of computational mesh. For the impeller channels, an OH topology pattern was used,
consisting of one O type block and four H type blocks. Mesh on the shroud gap was created using butterfly topology
structure. The non-matching coupling is created between the H and O blocks inside the gap. More detailed information
can be seen in usermanual by the NUMECA Software Company.
The computational mesh inside the inlet pipes and the volute was manually created using IGG module. And
butterfly technology was used to improve the mesh quality. Two rotor/stator interfaces were set-up separately at the inlet
and outlet of impeller. The computational mesh is illustrated in Figure 4, with more than seven and half million of grid
points. The Y plus value is less than 6 in most regions.
3.2 Boundary conditions
The total pressure and total temperature were specified at inlet boundary, according to the standard atmospheric
condition. The orientation of velocity vector was set to be normal to the inlet surface. The absolute Mach number was
extrapolated from the interior field. At the outlet boundary, the average static pressure was specified as back pressure.
The remaining dependent variables were obtained from the interior field through extrapolation which was a zero order
extrapolation of the static temperature and the absolute velocity.
The frozen rotor approach was employed at both rotor/stator interfaces, which can provide an appropriate solution
for treatments of inlet-rotor and rotor-volute interactions, where the pitchwise variations of the flow cannot be neglected.
The meshing of complete impeller, therefore, was used and simulated as required.
Besides, seven rotational speeds were calculated in this paper, ranging from low to high rotational speed, to predict
the whole compressor map. The symbol in Figure 6, ‘N’, denotes the maximum rotational speed that was the top limit
of the compressor. Other rotational speeds are illustrated by normalized values which are the ratios of actual rotational
speed and the maximum one.
3.3 Numerical scheme
The Spalart-Allmaras model was selected to close the RANS equations because of its robustness and ability to
treat complex flows, and the kinematic turbulent viscosity, that was estimated based on an assumption that the
kinematic turbulent viscosity ratio was within the range from 1 to 5 at the inlet boundary.
The discretization in space was based on a cell centered control volume approach. To compute the various fluxes, a
central scheme was adopted, using Jameson type dissipation with 2nd and 4th order derivatives of the conservative
variables. The flow equations were solved explicitly using the 4-stage Runge-Kutta method. For all simulations, the
CFL number was specified to be 3.
To ensure computational efficiency and fast convergence, the full multigrid technology was used. With this
technology, the mesh can have multiple grid levels in each direction of the computational domain and a preliminary
flow calculation can be first performed on coarser mesh. Besides, local time stepping and implicit residual smoothing
were used to accelerate the flow solver convergence.

4 Validation of numerical simulation

The computational meshes used were proved to be independent on the compressor aerodynamic performance by a
mesh sensitivity analysis that was done by performing 3D steady simulations on three sets of computational meshes
with the same topology pattern and different cell sizes(the results are not shown in this paper). The aerodynamic
performances of the compressor predicted by the 3D steady simulation methods were compared with the experimental
data, as Figure 5 illustrates, which were obtained by testing the compressor at a standard turbocharger flow bench in
Beijing Institute of Technology, to initially validate the computational mesh.
To further validate the computational mesh, the static pressure information along the meridional line on shroud
surface from inducer to exducer was obtained either by experimental measurements or by steady 3D simulations. Its
comparison is shown in Figure 5 as well.
For the compressor with inlet elbow, some pressure sensors were installed evenly at whole circumference at the
bend exit to measure the circumferential distribution of static pressure. Then, the measured pressure data were
3
compared with numerical results, as shown in Figure 5. All test data used in the comparison were from the
reference[15,16].
Though no unsteady simulation is involved in the current paper, the other research work[15] had proved that the
numerical scheme used in this paper is good enough to predict the flow field inside the researched turbocharger
compressor. A numerically predicted flow filed may not be quite the same as the experiment in aforementioned
comparisons, but the CFD method is still able to be used to investigate the impact of inlet distortion on compressor
performance in this research.

5 Results and analysis

5.1 Turbine map shifts

Figure 6 shows compressor efficiency responses to various installation angle of the inlet elbow at different
operating points. The variations in compressor efficiencies consistently reveal that no matter which operating point
within the map the centrifugal compressor operates at, varying the installation angle of the elbow relative to
downstream volute does influence the compressor efficiency, resulting in significant efficiency deviations. In
consequence, the compressor map shifts.
When operating near the chock point, such as those operation points marked with D, H and M in Figure 6, the
efficiency fluctuation is clearly shown in Figure 6. Among the 8 circumferential positions of the inlet elbow, the
installation angle of 135 is proved to be the worst circumferential position, since the deterioration of the compressor
efficiency is always the largest at large flow rate. Author’s previous research work performed on a similar model
pointed that the different compressor efficiencies at large flow rate caused by the different installation angle of the inlet
elbow are mainly attributed to the various uneven flow rate through a complete impeller revolution[7]. This mechanism
is different from that of the clocking effect in an axial compressor or turbine. Best performance is obtained when the
wake from upstream rotor/stator impeller blades is aligned with the leading edge of downstream rotor/stator impeller
after crossing middle stator/rotor row[17,18] and interacts with boundary layer [19].
Although the mean mass flow through each impeller channel is mostly the same during one impeller rotating cycle
at a stable operation point, the transient flow rate through each impeller passage is absolutely different with each other
because of its unsteadiness. Consequently, the unsteady flow rate in time domain leads to a circumferentially uneven
distribution of mass flow in space domain. This uneven mass flow possibly increases the total pressure loss inside both
diffuser and volute due to deteriorated uniformity of air entering the diffuser and generates more flow losses. In addition,
the unsteady flow rate across each impeller channel may deteriorate the impeller efficiency as well.
The installation angle of the elbow has also an effect on the stall margin of a centrifugal compressor, in addition to
the chock point. For instance, numerical simulations fail to get their convergences when an inlet elbow is oriented at
some circumferential positions, such as the circular angles of 45, 90 and 135, and operates at small flow rates, near
the surge line. But the numerical simulations at other installation angles can be successfully converged at those
operation points, and their aerodynamic performances can be well predicted. Figure 6 shows those phenomena
occurring at the operation points of A and E, and means that the numerical stall point shifts towards large flow rate for
some installation angles.
Besides, it should be noticed that no significant difference in the stall margin can be found when the compressor
operates at low rotational speed, 60%N. This may mean that the impact of the circumferential orientation of an inlet
elbow on the compressor stall margin is not significant at relatively low rotational speeds.
5.2 Incidence angle variations
For the case of air crossing a curved duct, it has been wildly studied and well known that a pressure gradient exists
between the inner and the outer walls depending on radius of the curvature. The pressure gradient exerts upon the air to
balance the centrifugal force, as shown by equation(1).
p V 2
= (1)
r r
4
 The centrifugal force exerted upon the air near the inner wall of the curvature is larger than that near the outer wall
due to different velocity and radius. The result is that the air near the inner wall is able to overcome the pressure
gradient over the cross-section in the elbow and therefore a more complicated secondary flow forms at the duct exit.
This secondary flow structure would be exactly symmetric with reference to the line between the outer and the inner
walls, if without other impact. The outer flow directs inwards along the wall and the inner flow directs outwards due to
flow continuity. As a result, the cross-section area is equally divided into two parts.
For the current research models, the flow is highly distorted at the pipe exit, where the distribution of some flow
parameters is decided by the effects of the elbow and the potential field of the rotating impeller. As the flow rate
increases, the velocity across the pipe increases. Equation(1) indicates that the centrifugal force is related to the square
of the velocity, and the secondary flow structure, therefore, turns to be less uniform as the flow rate increases, as in
Figure 7 illustrates.
Figure 7 shows the distributions of tangential velocity at the elbow exit at four operating points along a constant
rotational speed, 80%N. Those operation points are corresponding to those marked with E, F, G and H in Figure 6. Due
to the effect of potential field of the rotating impeller on the flow field upstream of inducer, the secondary flow no
longer has exactly symmetric structure on the cross-section.
The potential field from the rotating impeller has the same rotational direction with the impeller, and can change
the incidence angle to the inducer due to viscosity and then form a structure of pre-swirl flow. As a result, the
superimposed effect of the elbow induced distortion and the impact of the potential field is the root cause for the flow
parameter distribution on the cross-section plane being not exactly symmetric.
On the top half-plane of any plot in Figure 8, the secondary flow structure has the opposite direction to the rotating
impeller. Influenced by the elbow and the inducer, circumferential component (Vu) of the velocity(V) near the pipe wall
is lower due to the opposite direction of the secondary flow and impeller rotation. As a result, the secondary flow
intensity on the top half-plane is weaker.
In contrast, a positively superimposing effect occurs on the bottom half-plane at the bend exit corresponding to the
same impeller rotational direction shown in Figure 8. The circumferential velocity(Vu), therefore, is higher. As a result,
the secondary flow intensity is also enhanced on the bottom half-plane. This is why the secondary flow in both
half-planes has different intensities.
The secondary flow structures and their differential between two half-planes can cause different incidence angles
to inducer. For a detailed analysis, the definition of the incidence is expressed as follows:
i  1  1b (2)
The velocity diagrams and the possible boundary layer flow response to various incidences are shown in Figure 9.
It is fairly clear that both positive incidence and negative incidence at the inducer inlet can cause the flow separation
inside the inducer. Herein, the incidence is mainly decided by the direction of the secondary flow. For instance, as the
secondary flow has the same direction with the impeller, the negative incidence forms while the positive incidence
occurs when the secondary flow moves against the impeller’s rotation. The differential between the circumferential
velocity of air and impeller at two half planes can be expressed as U-(+∆Vu )and U-(-∆Vu), respectively. The ∆Vu
denotes the velocity change in response to the superimposing effect, and the symbols, ‘+’ and ‘-‘, represents the
direction of velocity vector. It should be noted that the absolute value of (+∆Vu ) is always larger than that of (-∆Vu) due
to different superimposing effects, either negative superposition or positive superposition.

5.3 Chock point

Figure 10 shows variations of compressor mass flow with the installation angle of inlet elbow as all the boundary
conditions of the computational domain remain the same. Herein, the flow rate was normalized by dividing the mass
flow through an elbow by the flow rate of the elbow with orientation of 0°. The flow rate distributions reveal that the
chock flow rate shifts with the inlet elbow’s position. Then significant deviations of mass flow clearly point out that the

5
chock point of the compressor moves towards to small flow rate as the inlet elbow is oriented at 135°. This phenomenon
also means that the 135° installation angle leads to a reduced compressor stable operating range, compared to other
installation angles of inlet bend. This means that a turbocharger compressor with 135° installation angle of elbow may
potentially miss the air flow target by 2 percent.
To fully understand the reason of chock point varying with installation angle of inlet elbow, some detailed analyses
are discussed herein. The impeller work input can be expressed as follows:
Wimput   c2uu2  c1u1   w f
w12  w22 u22  u12 c22  c12 (3)
    wf
2 2 2
The first two items in equation(3) equal to the compression work of air crossing the impeller channels and the flow
loss, as shown in equation(4). At the inlet of the inducer, the relative velocity in the distortion region is lower (w1 ↓) than
the rest of the inlet section because of distortion, as shown in Figure 11. If both pressure differentials across a single
impeller channel (p2-p1) and the rotational speed (u) kept the same, the decreased relative velocity at inducer inlet
according to equation(4) would be inevitable to drop the relative velocity at the impeller exit (w2 ↓). This reduced
velocity means that the flow rate across the corresponding impeller channel decreases, which well explains why the
inlet distortion generated by the elbow can reduce the flow rate through the influenced impeller channel.
w12  w22 u22  u12

2 dp
   W1 2 (4)
2 2 1 
As the elbow is oriented at 135, the pressure differential (p2-p1) across the influenced impeller channel is higher
than other impeller channels, due to the impact of tongue on pressure distribution in volute. Yang et al[15] pointed out
that the tongue of volute can cause a region with high static pressure in its neighborhood. And other researchers[20-22] not
only confirmed the presence of the high pressure region, but also discussed its effect on the impeller [23,24].
According to equation(4), the relative velocity at the exit of impeller passage will be further lower (w2 ↓↓) as the
impeller channel suffers from two impacts, i.e. from the inlet distortion and the high pressure region generated by the
volute tongue, at the same time (as illustrated by the plot corresponding to 135° bend in Figure 11). This superimposed
effect means that the influenced channel suffers from a more serious blockage. Zhao et al. [25] well illustrated the
blockage phenomenon of this sort using a time-space plot of Mach number. The blockage induced by both effects is the
reason that the compressor chock point moves towards the smallest flow rate and the minimum compressor efficiency
occurs as the inlet bend is located at 135°.
5.4 Stall inception
At rotational speed of 60%N, the installation angle of elbow has no significant impact on the surge limit, as shown
in Figure 6. In contrast, the numerical simulations could not get their convergent solutions when a compressor with inlet
elbow with some orientations operates at higher rotational speed at low flow rate. This means that the effect of the
circumferential installation angle of the elbow on the compressor stall is significant at high rotational speed.
Figure 6 shows that when a compressor operates near its surge limit, the compressor efficiency gets to deteriorate
as the inlet bend is oriented at 45°circumferential position, and then sharply drops as the inlet elbow rotates along the
rotating direction of impeller. Lastly, it does not rise until an installation angle of 180°. Within that circumferential span
from 45° to 180°, the lowest efficiency mostly occurs and the stall inception may start earlier than usual.
The impeller channel suffering simultaneously two impacts would firstly run into stall, since the stall inception
will fist occur in the impeller channel with lowest transient flow rate which is lower than the compressor stable limit.
For instance, Figure 12 shows the distribution of static pressure in the impeller near shroud wall for two models in
which the inlet elbow is respectively located at 90° and 270°. These two models correspond to the highest and the
lowest compressor stage efficiencies, respectively. It can be seen that the pressure distribution gets worse as the inlet
elbow rotates from 270° to 90°, where the two impacts affect one impeller channel almost at the same time.
The research of Yang et al.[15] on a compressor with straight pipe indicated that at design speed the stall inception

6
caused by downstream volute occurs at 115° circumferential position at inducer inlet. This is in agreement with above
finding that the 90° circumferential orientation of inlet bent duct, or 135°, mostly cause more compressor efficiency
deterioration when the compressor operates near surge point and the N-S equations fail to converge at lower flow rate at
the rotational speed of 80%N or 100%N.
The secondary flow structures with opposite rotational directions also have different effects on the stall
phenomenon, for they can lead to different incidences. Compared with negative incidence(-i), the positive incidence (+i)
induced by the superposition with U-(-∆Vu) can cause more serious flow separation near inducer tip, which plays an
important role on the occurrence of the stall inception, such as the large region with low static pressure near inducer tip
in Figure 12. From the plots, it can be seen that the vortex (secondary flow) with opposite direction relative to
impeller’s rotation is more unfavorable to the inducer tip stall, since the flow with opposite rotational direction leads to
more serious flow separation and large low pressure region on suction side of main blade near its leading edge. This low
pressure region is closely related to the leakage flow crossing over tip clearances and the reverse flow in impeller
channels. This is one of reasons for the compressor stall points moving with the setting angle of elbow.
5.5 Experimental validation
From the above analysis it can be seen that the installation angle of inlet elbow could associate the compressor
efficiency and stable operating range. Some unfavorable circumferential orientations not only deteriorate compressor
efficiency, but also decrease the compressor’s stable operating range via shifting the chock point or the stall point.
A turbocharger compressor with a similar bent duct with two circumferential orientations was tested to validate
aforementioned numerical analyses, the effect of the relative positions between the inlet elbow and the volute on the
compressor performance and the stable operating range. Figure 13 shows the comparisons of tested performance
corresponding to compressor with elbow with two circumferential orientations. The tested results clearly show that,
with the variation of the circumferential orientations of the inlet elbow, the compressor efficiency deteriorates and the
chock flow point shifts. It is well known that in a standard turbocharger flow bench a long pipe is usually installed at a
compressor inlet to achieve the measurements about the flow rate, the temperature and the pressure. Due to some limits,
the long pipe was unable to be installed at all circumferential orientations in the test bench. As a result, only two
circumferential orientations of inlet distortion were tested to validate the numerical analysis.
The experimental data verified the findings predicted by CFD method that the circumferential orientation of inlet
distortion relative to downstream volute does affect the compressor efficiency and changes the compressor stable
operating range via shifting the chock point. It should be noticed that the surge limit was not accurately captured in the
experiments. Therefore, the stall deviation predicted by experiments is not discussed here.

6 Summary
3D steady simulations with experimental validations were carried out on a turbocharger compressor with inlet
elbow that was oriented at 8 installation angles relative to downstream volute, to predict the variations of compressor
performance with the bend’s setting angle and to understand the potential physical mechanism about varying stable
operating range.
The compressor performance variations, obtained by numerical and experimental methods, confirm that the setting
angle of the inlet bend does shift the compressor map, and decreases its stable operation range. The numerical results
indicate that the superposition of the effects, i.e. the inlet distortion caused by inlet bend and the uneven distribution of
pressure caused by volute, not only shifts the chock point towards small flow rate, but also is unfavorable to the
impeller stall. Its result is that the stable operating range of compressor is decreased.
The velocity deficit in distortion region, together with the high pressure region induced by the volute’s tongue,
collectively affect the same impeller channel so as to cause more serious blockage inside that channel. Consequently,
the compressor chock point moves towards small flow rate.
The centrifugal force of the air passing elbow induces complicated secondary flow structure including two main
vortices at bend exit which has the opposite rotational directions. The vortex (secondary flow) having opposite direction
7
to the impeller causes the stall inception earlier via generating more positive incidence at small flow rate.
A production survey of turbocharged IC engines used in current market revealed that the curved pipes, like 90°
elbow in this paper, are used in many turbocharged IC engines, especially in some engines with two-stage turbocharging
technology. The findings in this paper can provide detailed understandings of aerodynamic interactions and useful
suggestions to the design of pipes at the compressor inlet to avoid the unfavorable superimposed effects and to make
use of exhaust gas energy efficiently.

Acknowledgement

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial supports for this work: the Key Projects of Hebei Provincial
Department of Education (No.ZD2016095), the Natural Science Foundation of Hebei Province (No.E2017402135), and
the Program of Science and Technology Research and Development of Handan (No.1621212047-2)
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Turbine—Part II: Unsteady Results and Boundary Layer Behavior." Journal of Turbomachinery 131 (2009):
021004-1.
[20] Zheng X, Zhang Y, Yang M, et al. Stability improvement of high-pressure-ratio turbocharger centrifugal
compressor by asymmetric flow control—part I: non-axisymmetrical flow in centrifugal compressor. J Turbomach

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 2013; 135: 210061–210069.
[21] Zheng X, Huenteler J, Yang M, et al. Influence of the volute on the flow in a centrifugal compressor of a
high-pressure ratio turbocharger. Proc IMechE, Part A: J Power and Energy 2010; 224: 1157–1169.
[22] Gu F and Engeda A. A numerical investigation on the volute/impeller steady-state interaction due to circumferential
distortion. ASME Paper, 2001, No. 2001-GT- 0328.
[23] Hillewaert, Koen, and Rene A. Van den Braembussche. "Numerical simulation of impeller–volute interaction in
centrifugal compressors." ASME Paper, 1998, No.98-GT-244.
[24] Hagelstein D, Braembussche RVD, Keiper R, et al. Experimental investigation of the circumferential static pressure
distortion in centrifugal compressor stages. ASME Paper, 1997, No. 97-GT-50.
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CP1 CP1
CP1
One revolution Repetition
Efficiency

CP5

Circumferential positions (CPs)

Figure 1 Comparison of compressor efficiency for 8 clocking positions

Bend at 90 Bend at 135

Bend at 0 Bend at 45

Bend at 180 Bend at 225 Bend at 270 Bend at 315

Figure 2 Illustration of the research models with different setting angle of elbow

9
 360/0

270 90

180

Figure 3 Illustration of circumferential orientation relative to the volute

Volute impeller Bent duct

Figure 4 Illustration of computational mesh and boundaries

0.8
2.4
CFD
0.7 80%N
Test
Efficiency

0.6 2.0
Pressure ratio

70%N
0.5 80%N 60%N
60%N
70%N 1.6
0.4 Test
CFD
0.3 1.2
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2
Normalized flow rate Normalized flow rate

10
 2.4 CFD 1.1
CFD
Test Test

Nomorlized pressure
Nomorlized pressure
2.0 1.0 Small flow rate

1.6
0.9
Small flow rate Large flow rate
1.2
0.8
0.8 Large flow rate
0.7
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 0 90 180 270 360
Inducer Nomorlized distance Exducer Angular /

Figure 5 Validation of computational meshes

11
 A B C D
3.0 100% N A B 0.65 0.65 0.64 0.53
C

Efficiency
Efficiency

Efficiency

Efficiency
90% N 0.39%
2.5 0.78% 0.58%

80% N EF
Pressure ratio

G D 0.64 0.64 0.63 0.52

0 90 180 270 360 0 90 180 270 360 0 90 180 270 360 0 90 180 270 360
2.0 Installation angle / Installation angle / Installation anle / Installation angle /
70% N
H 0.695 E 0.695 F 0.688 G 0.541 H
I JK L
60% N

Efficiency
Efficiency

Efficiency
1.5

Efficiency
50% N M
1.07% 0.62%
0.40%
40% N
1.0 0.680 0.680 0.673 0.526
0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 0 90 180 270 360 0 90 180 270 360 0 90 180 270 360 0 90 180 270 360
-1
Flow rate /kgs Installation angle / Installation angle / Installation angle / Installation angle /
0.72 I 0.73 J 0.71 0.46
0.73 K L M

Efficiency
Efficiency

Efficiency

Efficiency

Efficiency
1.32%
2.12% 1.56% 0.62%
1.18%
0.69 0.70 0.70 0.68 0.44
0 90 180 270 360 0 90 180 270 360 0 90 180 270 360 0 90 180 270 360 0 90 180 270 360
Installation angle / Installation angle / Installation angle / Installation angle / Installation angle /

Figure 6 Compressor efficiency responses to the changed installation angle of inlet elbow

12
 Vu /ms-1
Air flow 40

Exit
E

Elbow

H G F

-40

Figure 7 Comparison of circumferential velocity at elbow exit at different mass flow rates

‘+’ and ‘-’, U-(-∆Vu), i↑

‘+’ and ‘+’, U-(+∆Vu), i↓

Figure 8 Secondary flow structures at bend duct exit (at impeller inlet)

SS PS

-i +i

+∆ Vu -∆ Vu
U
U

Wa Ca Wa Ca

Figure 9 Incidence angle and boundary response

13
 360

270

Angular angle /
180

90

0
0.95 1.00 1.05
Flow rate ratio
Figure 10 Impact of elbow’s installation angle on chock flow rate, at operation point of H

Axial-velocity(Va) distribution

High
pressure

Low velocity
0 45 90 135

315 270 225 180

Static pressure distribution -1
60 Va /ms 160

120 Static pressure /kPa 170

Figure 11 Distribution of axial velocity at inlet of inducer together with static pressure distributed at half-span plane of diffuser, 8
orientations between inlet elbow and volute, operating at F point as shown in Figure 6

14
 Normalized pressure
2.8

Rotation

U-(+∆U)

U-(-∆U)

Stall
inception U-(-∆U)

U-(+∆U)
Tongue’s
impact

0 0

0.5
Bend at 90 Bend at 270

Figure 12 Scheme of tall inception and meridional streamlines, at operation point of D

2.4 0.8

2.2
0.7
Pressure ratio

Pressure ratio

2.0
0.6
1.8
0.5
1.6

1.4 0.4
0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0 1.1 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0 1.1
Normorlized flow rate Normorlized flow rate

Figure 13 Comparison of performance of compressor with inlet U-shape bent duct located at 0 and 30, respectively

15
Highlights:
The effect of various setting angle of inlet elbow on a compressor is studied.
Compressor map responses to varying inlet elbow orientations are quantified.
A fixed circumferential range improves efficiency and stable operating range.
A superimposed effect is found and suggested to be avoided in a boost syst.

16