Investigation of Non-Axisymmetric Endwall Contouring in a Compressor Cascade

The current paper presents experimental and computational results to assess the effectiveness of non-axisymmetric endwall contouring in a compressor linear cascade. The endwaU was designed by an endwall design optimi- zation platform at 0° incidence （design condition）. The optimization method is based on a genetic algorithm. The design objective was to minimize the total pressure losses. The experiments were carried out in a compressor cascade at a low-speed test facility with a Mach number of 0.15. Four nominal inlet flow angles were chosen to test the performance of non-axisymmetric Contoured Endwall （CEW）. A five-hole pressure probe with a head diameter of 2 mm was used to traverse the downstream flow fields of the flat-endwall （FEW） and CEW cascades. Both the measured and predicted results indicated that the implementation of CEW results in smaller comer stall, and reduction of total pressure losses. The CEW gets 15.6% total pressure loss coefficient reduction at design condition, and 22.6% at off-design condition （＋7° incidence）. And the mechanism of the improvement of CEW based on both measured and calculated results is that the adverse pressure gradient （APG） has been reduced through the groove configuration near the leading edge （LE） of the suction surface （SS）.

Aerodynamic Characteristic Research on Final Stage Stator of a Highly Loaded Fan

Due to corner separation and other complex three-dimensional flows existing in the highly loaded stator, which influences the fan performance significantly, highly loaded stator blades of a transonic fan with a maximum camber angle of 57° were studied in this paper and sector cascade experiment was adopted. In order to get the stator aerodynamic parameters as realistic as possible and conduct the experiment without the existence of rotor, an adjustable guide vane was designed to simulate the velocity magnitude and direction of the stator inlet flow. Results show that the adjustable guide vane can simulate the rotor outlet velocity direction and magnitude in most span range. The deviation angle is positive and the maximum value is nearly 21° because the severe separation is at 27% span. Corner separation exists on both pressure side and suction side and the location of separation initiation is determined. Finally, the stator blades were redesigned with some suction slots on the suction side. Experiment results show that the suction slots change the flow field structure, increase the capability of flow turning, and decrease the flow loss.

Method for utilizing PIV to investigate high curvature and acceleration boundary layer flows around the compressor blade leading edge

Particle Image Velocimetry(PIV)is a well-developed and contactless technique in experimental fluid mechanics,but the strong velocity gradient and streamline curvature near the wall substantially limits its accuracy improvement.This paper presents a data processing procedure combining conventional PIV and newly developed Mirror Interchange(MI)based Interface-PIV for the measurement of the boundary layer parameter development in the blade leading edge region.The synthetic particle images are used to analyze the measurement errors in the entire procedure.Overall,three types of errors,namely the errors caused by the Window Deformation Iterative Multigrid(WIDIM)algorithm,the discrete data interpolation and integration,and the wall offset uncertainty,comprise the main measurement error.Specifically,the errors due to the discrete data interpolation and integration and the WIDIM algorithm comprise the mean bias,which can be corrected through the error analysis method proposed in the present work.Meanwhile,the errors due to the WIDIM algorithm and the wall offset uncertainty contribute to the measurement uncertainty.Computational fluid dynamics-based synthetic particle flows were generated to verify the newly developed PIV data processing procedure and the corresponding error analysis method.Results showed that the data processing method could improve the accuracy of PIV measurements for boundary layer flows with high curvature and acceleration and even with significant flow separation bubbles.Finally,the data processing method is also applied in a PIV experiment to investigate the boundary layer flows around a compressor blade leading edge,and several credible boundary flow parameters were obtained.