Inlet Recirculation Influence to the Flow Structure of Centrifugal Impeller

Inlet recirculation is proved as an effective way for centrifugal compressor surge margin extension,and is successively used in some engineering applications.Unfortunately its working mechanism is still not being well understood,which leads to redesigning of inlet recirculation mostly by experience.Also,most study about inlet recirculation is steady to date.It is necessary to study surge margin extension mechanism about inlet recirculation.To expose the mechanism in detail,steady and unsteady numerical simulations were performed on a centrifugal compressor with and without inlet recirculation.The results showed that,with inlet recirculation,the inlet axial velocity is augmented,relative Mach number around blade tip leading edge area is significantly reduced and so is the flow angle.As the flow angle decreased,the incidence angle reduced which greatly improves the flow field inside the impeller.Moreover,inlet recirculation changes the blade loading around blade tip and restrains the flow separation on the blade suction side at the leading edge area.The unsteady results of static pressure around blade surface,entropy at inlet crossflow section and vorticity distributions at near tip span surface indicated that,at near stall condition,strong fluctuation exists in the vicinity of tip area due to the interaction between tip leakage flow and core flow.By inlet recirculation these strong flow fluctuations are eliminated so the flow stability is greatly enhanced.All these improvements mentioned above are the reason for inlet recirculation delays compressor stall.This research reveals the surge margin extension reason of inlet recirculation from an unsteady flow viewpoint and provides important reference for inlet recirculation structure design.

Investigation on Inlet Recirculation Characteristics of Double Suction Centrifugal Compressor with Unsymmetrical Inlet

The inlet recirculation characteristics of double suction centrifugal compressor with unsymmetrical inlet structures were studied in numerical method,mainly focused on three issues including the amounts and differences of the inlet recirculation in different working conditions,the circumferential non-uniform distributions of the inlet recirculation,the recirculation velocity distributions of the upstream slot of the rear impeller.The results show that there are some differences between the recirculation of the front impeller and that of the rear impeller in whole working conditions..In design speed,the recirculation flow rate of the rear impeller is larger than that of the front impeller in the large flow range,but in the small flow range,the recirculation flow rate of the rear impeller is smaller than that of the front impeller.In different working conditions,the recirculation velocity distributions of the front and rear impeller are non-uniform along the circumferential direction and their non-uniform extents are quite different.The circumferential non-uniform extent of the recirculation velocity varies with the working conditions change.The circumferential non-uniform extent of the recirculation velocity of front impeller and its distribution are determined by the static pressure distribution of the front impeller,but that of the rear impeller is decided by the coupling effects of the inlet flow distortion of the rear impeller,the circumferential unsymmetrical distribution of the upstream slot and the asymmetric structure of the volute.In the design flow and small flow conditions,the recirculation velocities at different circumferential positions of the mean line of the upstream slot cross-section of the rear impeller are quite different,and the recirculation velocities distribution forms at both sides of the mean line are different.The recirculation velocity distributions in the cross-section of the upstream slot depend on the static pressure distributions in the intake duct.