A Simple and Unified Model for Spanwise Mixing in Multistage Axial Flow Compressors

A basic equation system for meridional throughflow fields in multistage axial flow compressors has been deduced, containing many unknown correlation terms,which describe different kinds of spanwise mixing mechanism in a unified form.The equation system shows that spanwise mixing of meridional flows in compressors is attributed to three kinds of mechanism:molecular motion,turbulent diffusion,and circumferential non-uniformities,the last of which includes secondary flow effects and others.Therefore the equation system unifies the two models for spanwise mixing analyses by Adkins & Smith (1981) and Gallimore & Cumpsty (1986).With three kinds of apparent mixing coefficients defined and introduced into the basic equation system,a novel,much simpler equation system,without additional unknown correlation terms included,has been obtained.This novel equa- tion system makes throughflow computations including mixing far easier for multistage compressors.It has been rigorously shown that these apparent mixing coefficients contain full information of all the three kinds of mixing mechanism,so that the simpler equation system can also be taken as a unified model for meridional flows with all the kinds of the mixing effects.Calculations of the flow through multistage machines have been made by incorporating the new model into a streamline curvature throughflow calculation method and the improved agreement with experimental data has been obtained.It is believed that the simpler equation system can be applied to the flows not only in subsonic but in transonic and supersonic compressors if an appropriate model is proposed for the apparent mixing coefficients.

Numerical and experimental study of bleed impact in multistage axial compressors

In this study,the influence of inter-stage bleeding on the compressor performance and inter-stage flow field of a multistage axial compressor is investigated by both experimental and numerical methods.The experiment is conducted on a four-stage low-speed axial compressor,and a specific computational model is built to simulate the experiment environment accurately.To illuminate the fluid mechanisms of bleeding effect in detail,both the experiment and the simulation are carried out twice,i.e.,in the first time,the mass flow rate upstream the bleed location is constant under different bleed rate conditions;while in the second time,the mass flow rate downstream the bleed location is constant under different bleed rate conditions.The results demonstrate that inter-stage bleeding has little influence on upstream compressor characteristics,and affects the upstream flow field only in the rear half of the stator.The bleed effect on the downstream flow field is embodied in the variation of an incoming flow profile,an increase as the compressor inlet flow coefficient decreases.Therefore,such an effect is only significant on compressor characteristics at small flow coefficient conditions.In multistage compressors,the variation of compressor characteristics and flow field caused by inter-stage bleeding is the comprehensive result of the bleeding and the variation of the upstream working condition.In addition,the comparison between numerical and experimental results shows that the flow moves towards top half of span through the downstream rotor passage in the numerical simulation,whereas the trend of flow field variation with different bleed rates at the outlet of the downstream rotor and stator is the same with that at the inlet of the downstream rotor in the experiment,which means that the numerical method has overestimated the radial mixing intensity of the flow.