Journal of Turbomachinery.
Received August 14, 2017;
Accepted manuscript posted January 19, 2018. doi:10.1115/1.4039051
Rolls-Royce plc
VALIDATION OF A NUMERICAL MODEL FOR PREDICTING STALLED FLOWS IN A
LOW-SPEED FAN
PART 1: MODIFICATION OF SPALART-ALLMARAS TURBULENCE MODEL
Kuen-Bae Lee* Mark Wilson
Imperial College London Rolls-Royce plc
Mechanical Engineering Department Derby DE24 8BJ, UK
London SW7 2AZ, UK mark.wilson@rolls-royce.com
klee2@ic.ac.uk
ABSTRACT
The original Spalart-Allmaras (SA) model is known to predict
premature stall when applied to fan or compressor, which is in
line with the observation of other researchers who use the SA
model. Therefore, to improve the prediction of the stall
boundary, the original SA model was modified by scaling the
source term based on the local pressure gradient and the velocity
helicity of the flow. Furthermore, a generalized wall function
valid for non-zero wall pressure gradient was implemented to
improve the accuracy of boundary conditions at the solid wall.
This work aims to produce a turbulence model which can be used
tN
to model flows near the stall boundary for the transonic fan rotors
on relatively coarse grids of around 600k points per passage.
Initially, two fan rotors with different design and operating
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speeds were used to optimize the new parameters in the modified
turbulence model. The optimization was based on improving the
correlation between measured and numerical radial profiles of
sc
the pressure ratio. Thereafter, steady computations were
performed for two other fans (by using the same parameters) and
nu
the predictions were compared with the experimental data for all
the four fan rotors. Numerical results showed a significant
improvement over those obtained with the original SA model,
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when compared against the measured data. Finally, for
completeness it was decided to test the performance of the
modified model by comparing the result with measured data for
a simple canonical case.
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INTRODUCTION
The aim of this work is to develop a computational fluid
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dynamic (CFD) model which can be used for predictions of
flutter and non-synchronous vibration (due to prestall
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disturbances or rotating stall) for real industrial fan rotors in a
reasonable time frame, with the aim of mapping out a stability
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boundary within a week. It is obvious, but the development of
such a model is of great importance to all engine manufacturers
as it will allow the identification of potential vibration and noise
problems at early stages of development and consequently
reduce the number of rig/engine tests. The approach taken here
is to modify the SA turbulence model based on correlation with
the measured data, so that it can predict the stability boundary as
well as radial profiles of flow on relatively coarse grids of around
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Mehdi Vahdati
Imperial College London
Mechanical Engineering Department
d
London SW7 2AZ, UK
m.vahdati@imperial.ac.uk
ite
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600k points per passage using steady Reynolds-averaged Navier-
Stokes (RANS) simulations.
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The Spalart-Allmaras (SA) model [1] is a widely used
turbulence model for industrial flow computations and it has
been proven reliable in turbomachinery applications due to its
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simplicity, robustness and efficiency [2-7]. However, it is well
known that the original SA model predicts a larger separation
zone, which leads to the blockage of passages, limiting the static
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pressure rise, a considerable total pressure loss and premature
stall [5, 6]. Some studies have been made on this subject. As an
example, Liu et al. [5] proposed a modified SA model which uses
helicity to model the energy backscatter, which can be substantial
in the region of corner separation in the compressors. They
showed that by using the modified SA turbulence model, it is
possible to suppress the corner separation in a compressor
passage which appeared with the original SA model but was not
present in the experiment. The numerical results showed a good
agreement with the measured data in terms of the size of
separation and the distribution of the surface static pressure and
turbulent viscosity. Li et al. [6] improved the accuracy of the SA
model in shock-wave/boundary layer interaction flow by
including the effect of the adverse pressure gradient in the
turbulence model. Their results indicated that by modelling the
effects of the pressure gradient, the production of turbulent
viscosity becomes larger in the shock and separation regions, for
both impinging shock-wave/turbulent boundary layer interaction
flow and compression ramp flow. Their results showed a close
agreement with the experiment and direct numerical simulation
(DNS) in terms of the separation point and the profiles of wall
pressure and skin friction. Oriji and Tucker [7] devised new
modules for the SA model to account for acceleration, roughness
and streamline curvature. The modified model improved the
prediction of separation and reattachment point in an intake
under crosswind and showed a good agreement with the
experiment. They reported that the larger separation bubble for
the original model is due to the fact that the model cannot
generate sufficient turbulent viscosity to reattach the flow.
Although, the previous modifications were successful for
avoiding premature stall in the specific flows for which they
were designed, they were not general enough to apply to
transonic fan rotors. Therefore, a more reliable modified SA
model for fan rotors is developed in this paper. The aim of the
LEE
Journal of Turbomachinery. Received August 14, 2017;
Accepted manuscript posted January 19, 2018. doi:10.1115/1.4039051
Rolls-Royce plc
model is to suppress the unphysical separation zones, and hence
predict an accurate mean flow near the stall boundary.
Furthermore, a more generalized wall function [8] in the log
region which accounts for the effect of the wall shear stress as
well as the wall pressure gradient on the surface of the fans is
implemented.
This paper is organized as follows. First of all, the numerical
model and the test cases are introduced. In the second part, the
modifications made to the turbulence model are introduced and
the proposed model is validated. The numerical steady state
results, for several fan rotors, are compared with the measured
data in terms of pressure ratio, mass flow and radial profiles. In
the final part of this paper, the effects of the current modifications
for a simple canonical case, transonic flow over an axisymmetric
bump, [9-10] for which extensive measured data is available are
considered. Although such an analysis of turbulent structures is
not the prime objective of this paper, it is informative to see how
the current modification of the SA model change the viscous
quantities such as, separation/reattachment point and Reynolds
stresses.
NUMERICAL MODEL
Flow solver
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rip
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nu
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FIG. 1 DOMAIN USED FOR THE STEADY COMPUTATIONS
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The CFD code used for this work is AU3D [11], which is a
three-dimensional, time accurate, viscous, compressible
unsteady RANS solver, based on a cell-vertex finite volume
methodology and mixed-element unstructured grid. The flow
variables are stored on the nodes of a generic semi-structured
grid and numerical fluxes are computed along the edges of the
grid. The numerical fluxes are computed using Roe’s flux vector
difference splitting coupled to Jameson–Schmidt–Turkel (JST)
scheme. The solution method is implicit with second-order
d
accuracy in space and time. For steady-state flow computations,
the solution is advanced in pseudo-time using local time
ite
stepping, while dual time stepping is used for unsteady
computations to ensure time accuracy. Solution acceleration
ed
techniques, such as residual smoothing and local time stepping
are used for steady-state flow calculations and in the inner
iteration for the unsteady computations. It is assumed the
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frequencies of interest are sufficiently far away from the
frequencies of turbulent flow structures. The resulting CFD code
has been used over the past 20 years for flows at off design
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conditions with a degree of success [2-4, 12-14].
Computational domain and boundary conditions
The grids used for the blading are semi-structured, with
ot
hexahedral elements around the aerofoil, in the boundary layer
region, and prismatic elements in the passage. The rotor-to-rotor
grid is unstructured, but in the boundary layer region a body-
fitted two-dimensional O grid (which is refined toward leading-
edge and trailing-edge) is used. The O grid contains 335 points
on the rotor and 10 mesh layers in perpendicular direction to the
rotor. The radial grid distribution which consists of 49 radial
mesh layers is refined toward hub and casing to allow
representation of the end-wall boundary layers. The fan is
modelled with a typical rig tip clearance, using 6 grid cells in the
tip gap.
Four different fan rotors are considered for the steady
validation of the proposed numerical model. These include a
low-speed fan rotor (referred to as Fan A [13]), two high-speed
fan rotors (referred to as Fan B and Fan C [14]) and the NASA
Rotor 67 [15]. A typical domain used for the steady computations
of Fan A, B and C is shown in Fig. 1. The domain includes the
fan rotor, the outlet guide vanes (OGV), engine-section stators
(ESS) and a symmetric intake upstream of the fan. The flow
through the fan is controlled by placing two choked variable-area
nozzles downstream. The nozzle downstream of the ESS
controls the bypass/core flow ratio and remains fixed as the fan
rotational speed changes. The nozzle downstream of the OGVs
allows the computation to be conducted at any point on the
constant speed characteristic by simply modifying the nozzle
area. As the flow is choked in the nozzle, the solution will be
independent of the conditions specified at the nozzle exit. The
operating conditions considered correspond to sea level static
and zero inlet swirl. These conditions are specified at the far field
(see Fig. 1). The same domain was used for Fan A, Fan B and
Fan C and only the fan geometry was changed. The domain used
for NASA Rotor 67 consists of a straight cylindrical intake duct,
the fan rotor, the stator vanes and a variable nozzle. In all the
LEE
Journal of Turbomachinery. Received August 14, 2017;
Accepted manuscript posted January 19, 2018. doi:10.1115/1.4039051
Rolls-Royce plc

steady computations, the interface between a stationary and a

rotating blade row is modeled as mixing plane.

MODIFICATION OF SA MODEL AND THE WALL

FUNCTION
In this section, the modifications made to SA model and the
wall function is described. These modifications were continually
evaluated during their development by comparing the numerical
results for Fan A and Fan B against measured data.

d
The transport equation for the original SA (OSA) model [1]
is given in Eq. 1.

ite
𝜕𝜈̂ 𝜕𝜈̂
+ 𝑢𝑗 = 𝑐𝑏1 (1 − 𝑓𝑡2 )𝑆̂𝜈̂ − 𝐷𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑢𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛

ed
𝜕𝑡 𝜕𝑥𝑗 FIG. 2 β FUNCTION (SEE EQ. 5)
+𝐷𝑖𝑓𝑓𝑢𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑛 (1)
turbulent viscosity in the region of shock-wave/boundary layer

py
Here, 𝜈̂ is the corrected turbulent viscosity, 𝑢𝑗 is the velocity interaction, and consequently predicted accurate separation
component in the jth direction, t is the time, 𝑥𝑗 is the Cartesian points, showing a good correlation with the experiment. With
reference to the previous modifications, the original production

coordinate vector, 𝑐𝑏1 is the empirical constant, 𝑓𝑡2 is the trip
function and 𝑆̂ is the modified vorticity. The first term on the
left hand side in Eq. 1 is the time derivative and the second term
is the advection term. On the right hand side, the first term is the
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term (Eq. 3) is modified by using both the adverse pressure
gradient and the velocity helicity to increase the turbulent
viscosity in selected areas, such as the shock, separated region
and tip leakage flow. The original 𝑆̂ term is modified according

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production term followed by the Destruction and the Diffusion
to:
terms. In the work presented here, the Destruction and the
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Diffusion terms remain unchanged from the original model and ̂
𝜈
only the production term is modified. The turbulent viscosity is 𝑆̂𝑚 = 𝛽𝑆 + 𝑓 (4)
𝜅 2 𝑑 2 𝑣2
computed from the equations:
rip

𝛽 = 𝐶𝑠 × 𝐶𝑣ℎ (5)
𝜈𝑡 = 𝜈̂ 𝑓𝑣1 (2)
𝑐ℎ1 ×tanh⁡[𝑎1 𝑃∗2 ] 𝑐ℎ2 ×tanh⁡[𝑎2 𝐻 2 ]
𝐶𝑠 = + 1.0, 𝐶𝑣ℎ = + 1.0 (6)
sc

3 3 3
where 𝑓𝑣1 = 𝜒 /(𝜒 + 𝑐𝜈1 ) and 𝜒 = 𝜈̂ /𝜈. tanh⁡(1.0) tanh⁡(1.0)

𝑑𝑝 𝜌2 𝑢 3 1
Here, 𝑓𝑣1 is the Mellor and Herring’s damping function, 𝑐𝜈1 is where 𝑃 ∗ = / , 𝑛= (𝑢𝑥 , 𝑢𝑦 , 𝑢𝑧 ) and
nu

𝑑𝑛 𝜇 |𝑢|
an empirical constant and 𝜈 is the molecular kinetic viscosity.
𝐻∗ = 𝑢 ⃗ /|𝑢||𝛺|
⃗ ∙𝛺
The production term 𝑆̂ is given by:
Ma

̂
𝜈 Here, ch1 and ch2 are (the new) constants of the turbulence model
𝑆̂ = 𝑆 + 𝑓 (3) to be determined, a1 and a2 are the scaling factors, u is the
𝜅 2 𝑑 2 𝑣2
1 𝜕𝑢𝑖 𝜕𝑢𝑗 velocity vector, n is the unit vector in the flow direction, P* is the
where 𝑆 = √2Ω𝑖𝑗 Ω𝑖𝑗 , Ω𝑖𝑗 = ( − ) and
non-dimensional pressure gradient in the direction of flow, H is
ed

2 𝜕𝑥𝑗 𝜕𝑥𝑖

𝑓𝑣2 = 1 −
𝜒
. the helicity and 𝜴 is the vorticity. After a detailed numerical
1+𝜒𝑓𝑣1 study of Fan A and Fan B, the constants were chosen as ch1 = 0.5
pt

and ch2 = 0.7 and were kept fixed throughout the rest of this
Here, 𝑓𝑣2 is the damping function. The rest of the damping work. Beta is a hyperbolic tangent function of the adverse
functions and coefficients in Eq. 2 and Eq. 3 are unchanged in pressure gradient and helicity. The scaling factor a2 was chosen
ce

this work, and can be found in Ref. [1]. as 3 and produces a 'continuous' Heaviside function (see Fig. 2).
Liu et al. [5] modified the SA model using the velocity It comes from correlation between CFD and measured data;
Ac

helicity to take into account the energy backscatters. Li et al. [6]
introduced the adverse pressure gradient into the production term
in the original SA model so that the over prediction of separation
for the original SA model can be suppressed. Both modifications
improved the accuracy of the SA model. The modification with
helicity suppressed the unrealistic corner separation in
compressor passages and showed good agreement with the
measurement in terms of the size of separation bubble. The
modified model with adverse pressure gradient increased the
larger values of a2 may result in a lack of convergence for the
CFD solver, whereas lower values do not create viscosity fast
enough. The constant a1 is chosen to give a similar profile as Fig.
2 for the pressure gradient contribution, but it is mesh
dependent. As can be seen in Fig. 2, β increases gradually in the
selected areas according to the magnitude of the adverse pressure
gradient and the helicity. For a smooth flow field, β approaches
one, and hence the 𝑆̂𝑚 term converges to the original 𝑆̂ term

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Journal of Turbomachinery. Received August 14, 2017;
Accepted manuscript posted January 19, 2018. doi:10.1115/1.4039051
Rolls-Royce plc

in the SA turbulence model. Fig. 3 shows the Mach contour on
the suction surface of the benchmark low-speed fan rotor, Fan A,
near the stall boundary, together with the two components of the
β function given in Eq. 6. It is seen from this plot that, the
modified SA model can identify the regions of strong adverse
pressure gradient (the shaded region in Fig. 3(a) and the green
region in Fig. 3(b)) and helicity (three-dimensional flow shown
by the arrows in Fig. 3(a) and the green region in Fig. 3(c)). The
two components of the β function are superimposed on the fan
Shih et al. [8] suggested a more generalized wall function
based on the unified wall velocity by including both the wall
stress and the wall pressure gradient. They showed that both the
adverse and favorable pressure gradients have a significant effect
on the mean velocity and the turbulent shear stress. Therefore,
the unified wall function will be a more adequate boundary
condition for more complex flows. With reference to their work,
the standard wall function is modified as:

d
as in Eq. 5, and consequently increase the intensity of the 𝑢𝑐 = 𝑢𝜏 + ⁡ 𝑢𝑝 = √|𝜏𝜔 |/𝜌 + [(𝜈/𝜌)|𝑑𝑃𝜔 /𝑑𝑛|]1/3 (9)
turbulent viscosity in the selected regions, as shown in Fig. 3(d).

ite
Fig. 4 shows the general behavior of the β function as the
mass flow decreases and the fan moves towards stall. In this plot,

ed
the Mach number profiles on the suction side of the fan together
with the streamlines superimposed on them are plotted at three
mass flows. Also shown in this figure are the corresponding β

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functions. It is seen from the plot that on the design working line,
the streamlines on the suction side of the fan are almost uniform,
and hence the β function has a small influence on the flow. On

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the other hand, as the mass flow decreases and the incidence to
the fan increases, the shock strength increases and the flow on
the suction side of the fan becomes three-dimensional, and
consequently the 𝛽 function increases and becomes more

ot
dominant over a larger part of the fan, as shown in Fig. 4. It is
important to mention that, for all the mass flows shown in Fig 4,
tN
the shock is expelled from the passage and hence the β function
does not have any significant effect on the flow on the pressure
surface of the fan.
rip

In the second part of the modification, the wall function in

the log region is modified by introducing the wall pressure
gradient [8]. In general, the surface flows are affected by both
sc

the wall shear stress and the wall pressure gradient. The standard
wall function given in Eq. 7 [16], however, is only valid for a
nu

boundary layer with a small or zero pressure gradient.

𝑈 1 𝑢𝜏 𝑦
= 𝜅 𝑙𝑛( )+ 𝐶 (7)
Ma

𝑢𝜏 𝜈
where 𝑢𝜏 = √|𝜏𝜔 |/𝜌

In this equation U is the mean velocity, uτ is the skin friction

ed

velocity and y is the normal distance from the wall. Tennekes and
Lumley [17] derived the wall function for a boundary layer with
a strong adverse pressure gradient and zero wall shear stress. In
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this case, the adverse pressure gradient controls the surface flow:
ce

𝑈 𝑢𝑝 𝑦
= 𝛼 𝑙𝑛( )+𝛽 (8)
𝑢𝑝 𝜈
where 𝑢𝑝 = [(𝜈/𝜌)|𝑑𝑃𝜔 /𝑑𝑥|]1/3
Ac

Here, up is the wall pressure gradient velocity and α ≈ 5 and β ≈

8 are obtained from the experimental data [8]. In this work, x is
replaced by the direction of flow, n, and the pressure gradients
are calculated in the direction of flow as shown in Eq. 6. This is FIG. 3 COMPONENTS OF β FOR FAN A: (A) MACH CONTOUR
due to the fact that for the unstructured grid used in this work the WITH STREAMLINES, (B, C) EACH COMPONENT OF β AND
direction of pressure gradients cannot be defined based on the (D) SUPERPOSITION OF TWO COMPONENTS OF β
grid.

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Journal of Turbomachinery. Received August 14, 2017;
Accepted manuscript posted January 19, 2018. doi:10.1115/1.4039051
Rolls-Royce plc
tN
FIG. 4 GENERAL BEHAVIOR OF β FOR FAN A: (A) MACH
CONTOUR AND STREAMLINES AND (B) β CONTOUR
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CASE SETUP
The steady-state solutions from different versions of the SA
sc
model introduced in the previous section are presented.
According to the version of SA model and the wall function used,
nu
they are defined as:
1) Original SA turbulence model + original wall function
Ma
(OSA)
2) Original SA turbulence model + generalized wall
function (OSA+GWF)
3) Modified SA turbulence model + original wall function
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(MSA)
4) Modified SA turbulence model + generalized wall
function (MSA+GWF)
pt
As mentioned earlier, four different fan rotors are considered
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for the steady validation of the numerical model proposed in the
previous section. These include a low-speed fan rotor (referred
to as Fan A [13]), two high-speed fan rotors (referred to as Fan
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B and Fan C [14]) and the NASA Rotor 67 [15]. The
optimization of the functions and the constants used in Eq. 6 are
based on the study of Fan A and Fan B at two operating speeds.
The functions and constants used for Fan C and NASA Rotor 67
are not changed further. By using this approach, one can get an
idea about the limitations of the proposed turbulence model.
In the first instance, the effects of the modifications made to
the wall function (i.e. Eq. 8) were studied by performing
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computations for Fan A on two grids of very different densities
at 80% speed and at two flow coefficients. The 1st grid contained
0.5 × 106 nodes while the 2nd grid had 9.0 × 106 nodes. The 2nd
grid was refined in both radial and circumferential directions of
the fan rotor and the number of radial layers was increased (from
49 with 6 in the tip gap) to 256 layers with 25 grid cells in the tip
gap. For the 1st grid Y+ ≈ 20 and wall function was used, but for
the 2nd grid Y+ ≈ O(1), and hence the flow was resolved all the
way to the wall. The computations on the coarse grid were
d
performed with the original as well as generalized wall
functions. Single passage steady computations from the intake
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through to the throttle (Fig. 1) were performed by using the MSA
model. The grid for the intake, OGV, ESS and nozzle were the
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same for both fan grids. Fig. 5 shows the comparison of the radial
profiles of pressure rise between the two grids. It is seen from
Fig. 5(a, b) that the wall-resolved solutions show close
py
agreement with the results of the MSA+GWF for both flows,
showing the accuracy of prediction using the GWF and
confirming the applicability of the generalized wall function.
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APPLICATION TO TRANSONIC FAN ROTORS
In this section, the proposed modified SA model is validated
ot
by comparing the steady-state solution with the measured data in
terms of overall performance and radial profiles. In this section,
a summary of the results obtained is presented. It should be
mentioned that, for Fan A and B, the correct geometry is used at
each speed (i.e. allowing for change of stagger with speed).
Fan A
Fan A has 18 rotors, the tip Mach number is below 1 at
design speed and the hub-tip ratio at inlet to the rotor is about
0.3. Fig. 6(a) shows the comparison of the constant speed
characteristic between the measured data and the computed
results from different SA models at 80% speed. It is seen from
the plot that all the turbulence models fail to predict the positive
slope part of the characteristic. Furthermore, it is noticeable from
this plot that the OSA and the OSA+GWF predict the stall
boundary at a higher flow coefficient than the MSA and the
MSA+GWF (see the arrows in Fig. 6(a)). The under prediction
of the stall boundary is attributed to the fact that the OSA predicts
a larger separation zone than the MSA, which leads to the
blockage of the passage near the tip region of the fan. It is also
observed from this plot that, both the OSA and the MSA over-
predict the total pressure rise in comparison to the measured data,
indicating the shortcomings of the standard wall function for
such flows. Finally, it is seen from this figure that the results with
the MSA+GWF show a good correlation with measured data in
terms of pressure rise on the negative slope part of the
characteristic. However, even for the MSA+GWF, the steady
computations fail to predict the positive slope region of the
characteristic (0.83 to 0.95) shown in the measured data. In
previous studies [18-21], it was shown that localized asymmetric
unsteadiness around a fan rotor, such as rotating stall, start to
form and propagate on the negative part of the characteristic. In
Fig. 6(a), all the steady results have been obtained by using a
single passage steady approach with mixing planes, which does
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Journal of Turbomachinery. Received August 14, 2017;
Accepted manuscript posted January 19, 2018. doi:10.1115/1.4039051
Rolls-Royce plc

not allow asymmetric features in the solution. Therefore, the

under prediction of the stall boundary could be due to the fact
that the flow becomes asymmetric and unsteady in this region,
and hence single passage steady flow computations fail to
capture the correct physics. The effect of asymmetric
unsteadiness is addressed in Part II of the paper.
Fig. 6(b, c) compares the steady radial profiles of measured
and computed pressure ratio downstream of the rotor for the
reference speed, 80%, at two flow coefficients of 1.07 and 0.95.

d
For the computations at the higher flow coefficient of 1.07 (Fig.
6b), the use of GWF improves the prediction of the total pressure

ite
ratio as compared to the standard wall function, the latter over-
predicting the total pressure ratio by around 1%. Fig. 6(c) shows

ed
the comparison of the radial profiles at mass flow of 0.95. For
this operating point, the comparison can be made only for the
two MSA models as the OSA cannot predict the steady flow at

py
this point due to premature stall (as shown in Fig. 6(a)). There is
a close agreement between the measured data and the
MSA+GWF, confirming that both modifications, the turbulence

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model and the wall function, are necessary to obtain results in
accord with the measured data for such flows.
Fig. 7 compares Mach contours on the suction surface of Fan
A at 80% speed at mass flow of 1.02. Superimposed on these are

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the surface streamlines. It is clearly seen from these plots that
both MSA models (Fig. 7(c, d)) reduce the flow separation and
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the radial migration near the tip and trailing edge. This is obvious
as the turbulent viscosity in the MSA models is increased by the
effect of the β function in the selected areas. In addition, the
rip

GWF modifications in Eq. 9 will increase the wall shear stress in

the adverse pressure gradient regions which will result in
deceleration of the flow in these regions (Fig. 7(b, d)). The GWF
sc

has opposite effects in the favorable pressure gradient regions.

Fig. 8(a) shows the comparisons for Fan A at 100% speed.
nu

For clarity of plot, the measured data are compared with the OSA
and the MSA+GWF. Again, it is seen that the computed results
by the modifications show a significant improvement in
Ma

accuracy over the OSA. Fig. 8(b, c) shows the steady radial
profiles at mass flows of 1.31 and 1.17 for 100% speed. It is clear
from these figures that the modified model shows much better
agreement with the measurements for both points.
ed
pt
ce
Ac

FIG. 6 FAN A CHARACTERISTIC MAP AT 80% SPEED (A)

FIG. 5 GRID INDENPENDENCE STUDY: (A) DESIGN AND DISTRIBUTION OF STAGNATION PRESSURE AT
WORKING LINE AND (B) STALL BOUNDARY NORMALIZED MASS FLOWS OF (B) 1.07 AND (C) 0.95

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Journal of Turbomachinery. Received August 14, 2017;
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Rolls-Royce plc

d
ite
ed
py
Co
ot
FIG. 7 MACH CONTOURS ON THE SUCTION SURFACE OF
FIG. 8 FAN A CHARACTERISTIC MAP AT 100% SPEED (A)
tN
FAN A AT MASS FLOW OF 1.02: (A) OSA, (B) OSA+GWF, (C)
MSA AND (D) MSA+GWF AND DISTRIBUTION OF STAGNATION PRESSURE AT
NORMALIZED MASS FLOWS OF (B) 1.31 AND (C) 1.17
rip

Fan B and C
The calculated and measured results for the OSA and the
sc

MSA+GWF for high-speed Fan B at 80% speed are shown in

Fig. 9(a) (tip Mach number is about 0.9). As shown in this plot,
the modified model based on work for Fan A is in reasonable
nu

accord with the measured data for all the points on the
characteristic. In addition, it shows a better agreement with test
data than that of the OSA in the high mass flow region (1.07 to
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1.14) due to the modification of wall function.

The comparison of radial profiles flow coefficients of 1.0
and 0.85 are shown in Fig. 9(b, c). It is seen from the plot that at
ed

the higher mass flow the modified model shows a close

agreement with the measurement, showing a sudden drop in total
pressure rise at 75% height. As can be seen from Fig. 10(b), this
pt

drop is associated with flow migration in this region of the fan.

The OSA over-predicts the separation in the outer part of the span
ce

and stalls the flow in this region, as shown in Fig. 10(a). Again,
at the lower mass flow, the OSA cannot predict the steady flow
at this point but the modified model agrees well with the
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measured data, as shown in Fig. 9(c).

Fig. 11(a) shows the measured and computed characteristic
for Fan C at 70% speed (tip Mach number is about 0.79). It is
stressed that for this fan the functions and parameters of the
turbulence model were frozen based on Fan A and B. As can be
seen, the modified model not only extends the characteristic line
towards the stall boundary, but also improves the prediction of FIG. 9 FAN B CHARACTERISTIC MAP AT 80% SPEED (A)
pressure ratio. The steady computations, however, fail to AND DISTRIBUTION OF STAGNATION PRESSURE AT
NORMALIZED MASS FLOWS OF (B) 1.00 AND (C) 0.85

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Journal of Turbomachinery. Received August 14, 2017;
Accepted manuscript posted January 19, 2018. doi:10.1115/1.4039051
Rolls-Royce plc

d
ite
FIG. 10 MACH CONTOURS ON THE SUCTION SURFACE OF
FAN B AT MASS FLOW OF 1.00: (A) OSA AND (B) MSA+GWF

ed
estimate the whole characteristic line. It is believed that the

py
under-estimation of the characteristic (at this speed) is attributed
to the unsteadiness (asymmetry) in the low mass flow region (see
the data points at mass flow of 0.79 in Fig. 11(a) which has been

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obtained using full annulus unsteady computations).
Computed radial profiles for two mass flows of 0.9 and 0.81
are compared with the measured data in Fig. 11(b, c). It is seen
from Fig. 11(b) that the flow features in the measurement is well

ot
predicted at mass flow of 0.9 by the modified model. On the
FIG. 11 FAN C CHARACTERISTIC MAP AT 70% SPEED (A)
other hand, at mass flow of 0.81 (Fig. 11(c)) the computed results
tN
AND DISTRIBUTION OF STAGNATION PRESSURE AT
show a lower total pressure than the measured data for the top NORMALIZED MASS FLOWS OF (B) 0.9 AND (C) 0.81
20% of the fan. The under-prediction of the total pressure near
the tip region is attributed to the fact that the (symmetric) steady
rip

computations fail to predict the asymmetric nature of the flow at

this operating point, which results in premature stalling of the
near tip region. More details on the effects of asymmetric
sc

unsteadiness is addressed in Part II of the paper. It should also be

noted that, at near stall conditions the measurements become less
nu

reliable due to the presence of reversed flow.

NASA Rotor 67
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The previous three fans were designed by Rolls-Royce and

had certain similarities (such as hub/tip ratio). It was decided to
check the capabilities of the proposed modifications on a totally
different fan. One of the most common test cases for validation
ed

of CFD algorithms for predicting the flow over compressor fans

is the NASA Rotor 67 [15] for which a significant amount of
measured data is available. The comparisons of characteristics
pt

between the measured and computed results at 70% (tip Mach

number is about 0.86) and 100% (tip Mach number is about 1.24)
ce

speeds are shown in Fig. 12. It is observed again that the

modified model predicts all the points on the characteristic,
whereas the OSA model fails to predict the characteristic towards
Ac

the stall boundary for both speeds. The under-prediction of stall

boundary with OSA is more noticeable at 100% speed and was
also observed by other researchers [22] when using grids of this
size.
Fig. 13 shows the comparison of radial profiles between the
measurement and computations at 100% speed at flow FIG. 12 NASA ROTOR 67 CHARACTERISTIC MAP AT (A) 70%
coefficients of 0.99 (peak efficiency) and 0.93 (near stall). It is AND (B) 100% SPEEDS
seen from Fig. 13(a) that for the flow coefficient of 0.99, the

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Journal of Turbomachinery. Received August 14, 2017;
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Rolls-Royce plc

Fig. 15 shows the surface-pressure distribution plotted

against non-dimensional axial position x/c, in the range of 0.4 to
1.7. The measured data shows a peak at around 0.62 followed by
a steep increase in the surface-pressure, indicating a shock. The
original SA model underestimates the suction peak and predicts
the shock location upstream of the experimental position which
is in line with other SA results for this test case [9-10]. It is
noticeable from Fig. 15 that the prediction of the suction peak
and the shock location improves with the modified SA model and

d
shows a reasonably good agreement with the measurement. It is
also seen from Fig. 15 that the modified SA model tends to over-

ite
predict the pressure downstream of the axial position of x/c=0.8,
which was also observed by other researchers who used two-

ed
equation models [9-10]. The original SA model, however, shows
less deviation due to the over-prediction of flow separation. This
FIG. 13 DISTRIBUTION OF STAGNATION PRESSURE AND is attributed to the fact that the original SA model cannot produce

TEMPERATURE AT 100% SPEED FOR MASS FLOW OF (A)
0.99 AND (B) 0.93
modified model shows a noticeable improvement in the total
py
sufficient turbulent viscosity, and hence over predicts the size of
the separation bubble, as was already mentioned in the
introduction of this paper. This is confirmed by the profiles of

pressure ratio and the total temperature ratio between 50% to
90% height in comparison with the OSA model.
The results shown in this paper represent a selected
Co
the streamwise velocity (non-dimensionalized by the freestream
velocity) at different axial positions, as shown in Fig. 16(a). It is
clearly seen from Fig. 16(a) that the original SA model
overestimates the reverse-flow velocity whereas the modified

ot
summary of the steady state computations performed and
compared with the measured data for different fans and at model shows a good agreement with the measured data at all
different operating speeds. Other results, not shown here, give
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similar improvements in prediction of flows at design and at off-
design flow conditions. This study has demonstrated that these
modifications of the SA model and wall function can be
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beneficial for CFD predictions of transonic fan rotors and hence

enable one to explore the flow near the stall region, which is
presented in Part II of the paper.
sc

VALIDATION OF THE PROPOSED MODEL FOR

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CANONICAL FLOW
In this section, the implications of the current modifications
of the SA model for a simple canonical case for which extensive
Ma

measured data is available are considered. Although an analysis FIG. 14 GEOMETRY AND FLOW FEATURES
of turbulent structures is not the objective of this paper, it is be
informative to see how the current modifications of the SA model
will change the viscous quantities such separation/reattachment
ed

point and Reynolds stresses. Moreover, such a study may show

how to improve the model further. The validation case for this
study was chosen from the NASA TMR (Turbulence Modeling
pt

Resources) web site [9]: transonic flow over an axisymmetric

bump. It should be noted that for this 2D test case the helicity is
ce

zero and hence the helicity term in Eq. 6 is never activated.

Fig. 14 shows the bump geometry and the main flow
Ac

features for this test case. It is seen from Fig. 14 that a normal
shock interacts with the boundary layer which results in the
detachment of the boundary layer over the bump with a
subsequent reattachment on the downstream side. Based on the
experience of other researchers presented on the TMR web site
[9], the second-finest grid level 2 × 721 × 321, was used for the
computation. The inlet Mach number is 0.875, the Reynolds
number based on the chord length of the bump (c) is 2.763 × 106 FIG. 15 PRESSURE DISTRIBUTION
and the inlet temperature is 300K.

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Journal of Turbomachinery. Received August 14, 2017;
Accepted manuscript posted January 19, 2018. doi:10.1115/1.4039051
Rolls-Royce plc

The result of this paper show that, the proposed model which
was based on correlation with experimental data, is capable of
predicting the steady mean flow around fan rotors with a good
degree of accuracy.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors thank Rolls-Royce plc. and CleanSky for both
sponsoring this work and allowing its publication. They would
also like to thank their colleagues Professor Nick Cumpsty, Dr.

d
Sina Stapelfeldt and Mr. Wei It Kuan at Imperial College for very
useful discussion.

ite
NOMENCLATURE

ed
𝜈̂ = corrected turbulent viscosity
𝜈 = molecular kinetic viscosity
𝑓𝑡2 = trip function

py
𝑓𝑣1 = Mellor and Herring’s damping function
𝑓𝑣2 = damping function
𝑐𝑏1 , 𝑐𝜈1 = empirical constants

Co
𝑆̂ = modified vorticity
𝑐ℎ1 , 𝑐ℎ2 = amplitude of beta function
P* = non-dimensional adverse pressure gradient

ot
FIG. 16 PROFILES OF (A) STREAMWISE VELOCITY AND (B) 𝒏 = direction of flow
REYNOLDS STRESS 𝐻 = velocity helicity
tN
𝜴 = vorticity
positions. Fig. 16(b) shows the corresponding profiles of the 𝑢𝜏 = skin friction velocity
non-dimensional Reynolds stress. Both SA models under predict 𝑢𝑝 = wall pressure gradient velocity
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the measured data, which was also observed by other researchers 𝑦 = normal distance from the wall
[9-10]. On the other hand, the modified model shows a better u = velocity
agreement with the measurement data in terms of the alignment 𝜌 = density
sc

of the peak Reynolds stress for all positions. In addition, it is 𝜏𝜔 = wall shear stress
confirmed from Figs. 15 and 16 that the modified SA model 𝑃𝜔 = wall pressure
without wall function shows a close agreement with the results 𝐶𝑝 = wall pressure coefficient
nu

with generalized wall function, confirming the applicability of

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Ma

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Ac

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Rolls-Royce plc

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tN
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rip

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