Effect of blade sweep on inlet flow in axial compressor cascades

This paper presents comparative numerical studies to investigate the effects of blade sweep on inlet flow in axial compressor cascades. A series of swept and straight cascades was modeled in order to obtain a general understanding of the inlet flow field that is induced by sweep.A computational fluid dynamics（CFD） package was used to simulate the cascades and obtain the required three-dimensional（3D） flow parameters. A circumferentially averaged method was introduced which provided the circumferential fluctuation（CF） terms in the momentum equation.A program for data reduction was conducted to obtain a circumferentially averaged flow field.The influences of the inlet flow fields of the cascades were studied and spanwise distributions of each term in the momentum equation were analyzed. The results indicate that blade sweep does affect inlet radial equilibrium. The characteristic of radial fluid transfer is changed and thus influencing the axial velocity distributions. The inlet flow field varies mainly due to the combined effect of the radial pressure gradient and the CF component. The axial velocity varies consistently with the incidence variation induced by the sweep, as observed in the previous literature. In addition, factors that might influence the radial equilibrium such as blade camber angles, solidity and the effect of the distance from the leading edge are also taken into consideration and comparatively analyzed.

Effect of boundary conditions on downstream vorticity from counter-rotating swirlers

Particle image velocimetry（PIV） is utilized to measure the non-reacting flow field in a reflow combustor with multiple and single swirlers. The velocity field, vortex structure and total vorticity levels are experimentally obtained using two different boundary conditions, representing a single confined swirler and multiple swirlers in an annular combustor. The influence of the boundary conditions on the flow field at several locations downstream of the swirlers is experimentally investigated, showing that the central vortex in the multi-swirler case is more concentrated than in the single-swirler case. The vorticity of the central vortex and average cross-sectional vorticity are relatively low at the swirler outlet in both cases. Both of these statistics gradually increase to the maximum values near 20 mm downstream of the swirler outlet, and subsequently decrease. It is also found that the central vortex in the multi-swirler case is consistently greater than the single-swirler case. These results demonstrate the critical influence of boundary conditions on flow characteristic of swirling flow, providing insight into the difference of the experiments on testbed combustor and the full-scale annular combustors.