Effect of system response on partial surge initiated instability in a transonic axial flow compressor

Partial surge is a type of instability inception in transonic compressors and occurs in the form of axisymmetric low-frequency disturbances localized in the hub region.Previous studies illustrate that the frequency of partial surge is set by the Helmholtz frequency of the entire system,which motivates to propose a hypothesis that the system response performs an important role in the formation of partial surge.For further verification,a series of experiments are conducted to explore the link between the propagating of the partial surge and the system feedback in this study.In the first case,an additional test point is set on the wall of the plenum to detect the system response.Combining the flow behaviors inside the plenum with the disturbances in the rotor tip and stator hub/tip regions,the effects of the system feedback on the occurrence of the continuous disturbances and the rotating stall cells are illustrated.In the second case,a screen is mounted at the compressor outlet to prevent positive feedback from the plenum.The experimental results demonstrate that in the absence of system feedback,it is the occurrence of spike-type stall inception that leads to the flow instability instead of that of partial surge.In addition,three flow phenomena in the second case are discussed,including the occurrence of the single pulse,the unstable process during the stall evolution and the switch of instability inception.

Instability Inception of a Single Rotor Embedded in a Transonic Stage with Partial Surge Inception

Partial surge is a type of instability inception discovered in our previous studies.It has been confirmed that partial surge is localized in the blade hub region,and the flow oscillation it caused will lead to the stall cells in the rotor tip.While since all information about partial surge is obtained from the compressor stage experiments,what will happen to the stall process after the stators are removed is also an issue that worth investigating.So,in this paper,a series of experiments are carried out on the single rotor embedded in the transonic compressor stage with partial surge inception.First,the experimental results under uniform inlet conditions show that,although partial surge appears at high rotor speed in the stage case,it does not occur at any speed in the single rotor case.Then,it is found by numerical simulation that the absence of partial surge may be due to the insufficient rotor hub loading,so an experiment with increased hub loading is carried out,but still fails to trigger partial surge.Finally,the reason why partial surge doesn’t occur in the single rotor is discussed.From these results,it can be concluded that partial surge cannot occur in the single rotor case,and the large-scale comer separation in the stator hub is considered to play an important role in the formation of partial surge.

Impact of circumferential inlet distortion on different types of stall inceptions in a transonic compressor

The application of higher bypass ratios and lower pressure ratios significantly reduces specific fuel consumption with the development of turbofan engines.However,it also increases the risk of flow separation at the intake,leading to severe circumferential non-uniform inlet conditions.This study aimed to present an experimental investigation on instability evolutions of the compressor under circumferential non-uniform inlet conditions.Two stall inceptions regarding the different spatial scales and initial locations were selected to investigate this issue.The experiments were carried out on one tested rig,which the stall inceptions verified with the rotational speeds.At 65%design rotational speed(X),the stall inception was the spike,which was triggered by disturbances within serval pitches scale at the tip.Consequently,the spike-type stall inception was sensitive to circumferential distortion and led to a shrunk stall margin of the compressor.With the rotational speed increasing to 88%X,the stall inception switched to partial surge,which was induced by the flow blockage in the hub region around the full-annular.The results indicated that the partial surge was insusceptible to the circumferential distortion,which caused an extended stall margin with a lower stalled mass flow rate.In summary,the influence of distortion on the stability of the target compressor was found to be determined by the stall inception.