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Article in Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers Part A Journal of Power and Energy · March 2012
DOI: 10.1177/0957650911427244
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DOI: 10.1177/0957650911427244
axial compressor could efficiently improve the perfor- 2 SPECIFICATION OF THE AXIAL
mance and stability. Unsteady flow simulations in an COMPRESSOR
axial compressor with four different semicircular slots
were performed by Hembera et al. [7] using a three- The transonic axial compressor with NASA Rotor 37
dimensional (3D) time-accurate Favre-averaged is investigated in this study. The details of the speci-
Navier–Stokes flow solver. The results show the effec- fications are presented in Table 1 from AGARD report
tiveness of the casing treatment with an upstream by Dunham [11]. The rotor operates at a speed of
stator. 17 188.7 r/min, and has a total pressure ratio of
In addition, various types of grooves have been sug- 2.106 and a adiabatic efficiency of 88.9 per cent at
gested by many researchers to understand the mech- 20.19 kg/s. The tip clearance is 0.356 mm (0.47 per
anisms of stall and surge, and it has been reported cent span), the choking mass flow 20.93 kg/s, and
that using grooves increases SM by delaying stall. the near-stall point 0.925 of the choke flow. The
Huang et al. [8] reported the effects of the width blade of NASA Rotor 37 sections is defined by a multi-
and depth of the circumferential groove casing treat- ple-circular-arc.
ment on SM by 3D numerical analysis, and suggested Figure 1 shows a meridional plane of NASA Rotor
that the stall mechanism was substantially influenced 37. As shown in Fig. 1, flow parameters such as
by tip clearance. Muller et al. [9] studied the effects total pressure and total temperature, in relation to
of the number and depth of casing grooves on SM mass flowrate, are measured at the inlet (Station
by 3D numerical analysis. Houghton and Day [10] 1) and the outlet (Station 2) located 41.9 mm
examined the effect of grooves on rotor outflow upstream of the blade leading edge and 106.7 mm
blockage, and the near-casing flow field was studied downstream of the trailing edge near the hub,
using experimental and computational methods. respectively.
However, the previous works have been focused on
grooves with various depths, widths, and types rather
than different shapes of grooves.
In this study, the effects of the circumferential Table 1 Specifications of NASA Rotor 37
casing grooves on the performance of an axial com- Design mass flowrate (kg/s) 20.19
Rotational speed (r/min) 17 188.7
pressor have been numerically analysed based on 3D Total pressure ratio 2.016
Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) equations. Inlet hub-tip ratio 0.7
Blade aspect ratio 1.19
Also, the SMs and the peak adiabatic efficiencies with Tip relative inlet Mach number 1.48
various shapes of the circumferential casing grooves Hub relative inlet Mach number 1.13
are compared and evaluated in order to explore the Tip solidity 1.29
Number of rotor blades 36
influence of groove shape.
3 DESCRIPTION OF THE CIRCUMFERENTIAL grids in other regions. The H/J/C/L grid topology
CASING GROOVES allows a separate choice of topology types for the
upstream and downstream ends of the passage mesh.
In this study, the five different shapes of the circumfer- Therefore, H/J/C/L grid topology provides the best
ential casing grooves, as shown in Fig. 2, are consid- mesh quality for the asymmetry airfoil shape. Also, a
ered, and their stabilities and performances are non-matching H-grid mesh is employed as the topol-
compared with each other. Each type of the circumfer- ogy of the tip clearance mesh. The inlet and outlet
ential casing grooves except case 4 consists of seven blocks are constructed with 60 37 17 and
grooves. Case 1 as shown in Fig. 2(a) has the rectangular 60 37 21 grid points, respectively, while the main
shape of the circumferential casing grooves with depth passage except for the tip clearance and the
4.272 mm evenly spaced from the leading edge to the O-type grids is constructed with 40 37 84 grid
trailing one, as suggested by Huang et al. [8]; the width points. Also, the tip clearance and O-type grids are con-
of each groove is 10 per cent tip axial chord with a gap of structed with 20 37 84 and 216 720 grid points,
5 per cent tip axial chord. Huang et al. [8] studied the respectively. The O-grid with a width factor of 0.5 and
effects of the width, depth, and tip clearance of case 1 20 elements is assigned. This study uses a total of
on SM by numerical analysis. They showed that the 480 000 nodes as an optimal number of grids deter-
application of the circumferential casing grooves is mined by the grid dependency test in the previous
beneficial to expand the operating range of an axial work [13] to define the main flow passage of the axial
compressor. Case 1 is the base model of this study, compressor. Figure 3 shows the effects of computa-
which is used to investigate the effects of the casing tional grids on the performance curves for the effi-
grooves on the performance of the axial compressor. ciency and pressure ratio. As shown in this figure, the
The configurations of the other cases are designed on values of the adiabatic efficiency and pressure ratio
the basis of case 1. As shown in Figs 2(b) and (c), cases 2 almost do not change with the variation of number of
and 3 are the models skewed forward and backward by grids from 480 000 to 740 000. The predicted near-stall
45 , respectively. Thus, the depth of each case is normalized mass flows for the grid numbers, 270 000,
reduced to 3.021 mm due to the changed value of 480 000, and 740 000 are 0.939, 0.921, and 0.920, respec-
angle. Figure 2(d) shows that case 4 is designed with tively. Each groove is constructed with 20 48 25 grid
the rounded edges of each circumferential casing points. The near-wall mesh progression is kept as 1.2
groove. Also, case 5 has an additional circumferential with a distance of 0.002 mm for first node. Figure 4
casing groove both upstream and downstream of the shows the grid systems for different shapes of grooves.
blade in comparison with case 1, as shown in Fig. 2(e). The shear stress transport (SST) turbulence model
is used as a turbulence closure. The SST model uses a
4 NUMERICAL ANALYSIS k–! model at the near-wall region, and a k–" model in
the bulk domain, and a blending function ensures
For this study, ANSYS-CFX 11.0 [12] is employed for smooth transition between two models. It is reported
a 3D steady-state flow analysis of an axial compres- by Bardina et al. [14] that the SST model is more effec-
sor with the circumferential casing grooves. Three- tive to analyse the flow separation by adverse pres-
dimensional RANS equations have been discretized sure gradient than other two-equation models. The
with finite volume method. Blade-Gen, Turbo-Grid, accuracy of the numerical scheme for turbulent
CFX-Pre, CFX-Solver, and CFX-Post are used for Blade flow is highly dependent upon the treatment of the
profile creation, mesh generation, boundary condition wall shear stress. In this study, the near-wall grid res-
definition, numerical analysis, and post-processing, olution is adjusted to keep y þ 42 for the accurate
respectively. In addition, creation of circumferential capturing of wall shear stress, and also for the appli-
casing groove and its mesh generation are performed cation of low-Reynolds number version of SST model.
by Design-Modeler and integrated computer-aided The working fluid is considered as an ideal gas in
engineering and manufacturing-computational fluid this study. Total pressure and total temperature at the
dynamics (ICEM-CFD), respectively. inlet are set to 101 325 Pa and 288.15 K, respectively.
The computational domain investigated in this study The designed mass flowrate is set at the outlet for
consists of one blade-to-blade passage of the axial steady-state simulation. Adiabatic walls with no slip
compressor and the circumferential casing grooves and hydraulically smooth walls are considered at the
by assuming that the flow between two adjacent solid boundaries. The periodic boundary is set at the
blades is periodic about the rotating direction. blade passage interface, and tip clearance is consid-
A structured grid system is constructed in the compu- ered along with the passage. The general grid inter-
tational domain of an axial compressor, which has face (GGI) method is used for the connection between
O-type grids near the blade surfaces and H/J/C/L the passage and the grooves. The GGI method is the
Fig. 2 Various shapes of the circumferential casing grooves: meridional planes of (a) case 1,
(b) case 2, (c) case 3, (d) case 4, and (e) case 5
class of grid connections where the grids on either 5 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
side of the two connected surfaces do not match [12].
For the numerical analysis, the computations have Validation of the flow analysis results for the total
been performed by an Intel Core I7 CPU 2.67 GHz PC. pressure ratio and the adiabatic efficiency in compar-
The computational time is approximately 6–7 h. ison with the performance test results from AGARD
The convergence criterion is suggested by Chen et al. for case 1, which are obtained by the aforemen-
[15] as follows. tioned criteria. The total pressure ratios of the
smooth casing and case 1 at near-stall points are
1. The inlet mass flowrate variation is less than
2.073 and 2.086, respectively. The adiabatic efficien-
0.001 kg/s for 300 steps.
cies of the smooth casing and case 1 at the peak adi-
2. The difference between inlet and outlet mass flow-
abatic efficiency are 85.23 per cent and 85.12 per cent,
rate is less than 0.5 per cent.
respectively. In comparison with the smooth casing,
3. At that time, the adiabatic efficiency variation is
the circumferential casing grooves contribute to a sig-
less than 0.03 per cent per 100 steps.
nificant reduction of the near-stall mass flow, and
The same convergence criterion is used to find the consequently to the improvement in the SM. Higher
numerical stall inception point in this study. In Fig. 5, total pressure and higher efficiency are also achieved
the near-stall point predicted based on this conver- for most of the range between the peak efficiency and
gence criterion is 0.921, while the near-stall point stall points, but the peak adiabatic efficiency slightly
measured by the experiment is 0.925, which is the decreases when the circumferential casing grooves
mass flow normalized by choking mass flow. are installed. It is thought that separation resulting
in pressure loss near the blade’s suction surface is
5.1 Performance enhancement via application reduced by the high-momentum flux from the cir-
of the circumferential casing grooves cumferential casing grooves.
The vortical structures at the near-stall point of the
At a low mass flowrate, the tip-leakage flow and tip- smooth casing (normalized mass flow, 0.921) are
leakage vortex induce a stagnation zone downstream shown in Fig. 7. One of the effects of the circumfer-
of the passage shock which is caused by a vortex ential casing groove is to change the angle between
breakdown. This leads to a critical blockage of the the tip-leakage vortex and the blade, resulting in the
main flow resulting in the instability of the axial com- change of the trajectory of the tip-leakage vortex. The
pressor. This phenomenon of the tip-leakage vortex tip-leakage flow driven by the pressure gradient over
breakdown is the general characteristic of the tran- the blade tip interacts with the inflow of the passage,
sonic compressors with NASA Rotor 37 [8, 16, 17]. and it produces the tip-leakage vortex. In the axial
In this study, case 1 with rectangular groove shape compressor without the circumferential casing
is selected as the base model in order to evaluate the grooves, the tip-leakage vortex is mainly driven by
effects of the circumferential casing grooves on per- the tip-leakage flow, and it proceeds along the pres-
formance of the axial compressor compared with the sure surface of the blade as shown in Fig. 7(a).
case of smooth casing. Also, the total pressure ratio However, in case 1, the pressure gradient over the
and the adiabatic efficiency are used as the perfor- blade tip region is decreased compared to the
mance parameters of the compressor. As shown in smooth casing design, especially near the leading
Figs 6(a) and (b), it is predicted that the near-stall edge, and is mainly driven by the inflow. This
points are 0.921 for the smooth casing and 0.882 makes the incidence angle smaller, which is resulted
Fig. 6 Performance curves for the smooth casing and case 1: (a) total pressure ratio and (b) adi-
abatic efficiency
in a tip-leakage vortex closer to the passage centre in smooth casing. The circumferential casing grooves
the axial compressor with the circumferential casing also have an effect on the momentum transport
grooves, as shown in Fig. 7(b). across the blade tip. As shown in Figs 9(a) and (b),
Figure 8 shows the pressure distributions on the separation occurs on the suction side of the blade in
pressure and suction surfaces of the blade at 98 per the axial compressor with the smooth casing; it is
cent span. With the circumferential casing grooves, suppressed in the axial compressor with the circum-
the change in the pressure difference between the ferential grooves, and the Mach number around the
pressure and suction surfaces is observed at each suction surface is eventually recovered. It is thought
groove location. It is thought that a remarkable reduc- that the application of the grooves generates the high-
tion in pressure difference has occurred near the momentum flux from the pressure surface to the
leading-edge region due to a decrease in blade load- suction surface. Consequently, the suppressed sepa-
ing near the leading edge by the reduced incidence ration on the suction surface of the blade aids the
angle, while the pressure differences at the locations improvement of the operating stability. The static
of the third and fourth grooves are increased. pressure on the suction surface of the blade is also
Figure 9 illustrates Mach number contours for the recovered due to the suppressed separation shown
smooth casing and case 1 at the near-stall point of the in Fig. 8.
Figure 10 shows the entropy contours for the are area-averaged in circumferential direction. As
smooth casing and case 1 on the meridional plane shown in Fig. 10, the application of the circumferen-
at each peak efficiency point. The entropy values tial casing grooves has negative effects in this aspect.
Higher entropy generation is observed near the
casing of the axial compressor with the circum-
ferential casing grooves; this explains the inevi-
table decreases in the efficiency of the compressor.
However, the entropy generation of the smooth
casing near the casing is significantly reduced com-
pared to case 1. This reduction in entropy generation
contributes to the recovery of the efficiency.
Fig. 7 Vortical structure at the near-stall point: (a) Fig. 8 Pressure distributions at the near-stall point (98
smooth casing and (b) case 1 per cent span)
Fig. 9 Mach number contours at the near-stall point (98 per cent span): (a) smooth casing and
(b) case 1
Fig. 12 Axial velocity contours at the near-stall point (99 per cent span, m/s): (a) smooth casing,
(b) case 1, (c) case 2, (d) case 4, and (e) case 5
phenomena are also observed in cases 4 and 5 as consequently reduces the losses by the tip-leakage
shown in Figs 12(d) and (e). vortex near the tip region.
Figure 13 shows the entropy contours at 99 per cent
span for the smooth casing and each type of the cir- 6 CONCLUSIONS
cumferential casing grooves except for case 3 at the
near-stall point of the smooth casing (normalized In this study, numerical analysis of the axial compres-
mass flow, 0.921). As shown in Fig. 13, the application sors based on 3D RANS equations has been per-
of the circumferential casing grooves shows mostly formed to find the effects of the circumferential
lower entropy values in the downstream region of casing grooves on the performance of an axial com-
the blade passage in comparison with the smooth pressor as well as to compare the performances with
casing. Consequently, this reduction in the entropy various types of the circumferential casing grooves in
generation with the circumferential casing grooves terms of the SM and the peak adiabatic efficiency.
contributes to the recovery of the efficiency near the From the results, it is found that the vortex stagnation
low mass flow region. zone induced by interaction between the tip-leakage
Figure 14 shows the tangential velocity contours in vortex and the passage shock is a primary factor for
the openings of the circumferential casing grooves for the instability of an axial compressor. Moreover, the
cases 1 and 3, which are the most and least effective application of the circumferential casing grooves is
shapes for the stability, respectively, at each peak effi- beneficial to reduce the vortex stagnation zone, and
ciency point. The application of the circumferential the stability of the axial compressor is varied with the
casing grooves results in a tip-leakage vortex closer to groove shape. Higher total pressure and higher effi-
the passage centre that generates more losses near ciency are achieved for most of the range between the
the tip region. However, as shown in Fig. 14, case 1 peak efficiency and stall points, but the peak adia-
shows slightly higher tangential velocity in the open- batic efficiency slightly decreases when the circum-
ings of the circumferential casing grooves compared ferential casing grooves are installed. The case with
to case 3. The higher velocity makes the tip-leakage the rectangular grooves is shown to be most effective
flow closer to the pressure surface of the blade, and in the aspects of the SM and peak adiabatic efficiency
among four cases. On the other hand, the case with compressor. In Proceedings of the ASME turbo
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Korea government (MEST) [grant number 2011- Engineers, New York).
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