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FLOW DYNAMICS OF A SUBSONIC AXIAL COMPRESSOR ROTOR WITH LEANED TANDEM BLADES
Journal
Proceedings of the ASME Turbo Expo
Date Issued
2022-01-01
Author(s)
Kumar, Amit
John, Jerry T.
Kumar, Akshay
Chhugani, Hitesh
Pradeep, A. M.
Abstract
For higher diffusion, tandem blading has demonstrated performance superiority over a conventional blade. Modern compressor blades are often designed with three-dimensional blade shapes such as sweep, lean, dihedral, end bent etc., to achieve optimum performance. However, the performance benefit reported due to the three-dimensional blade shapes have been design-specific. Since a tandem rotor involves an unconventional design approach, each aspect of the 3D blade design needs to be looked at separately. The present numerical study aims to investigate the performance of a tandem rotor with lean. The performance of the leaned tandem rotor is also compared with the conventional leaned rotor. Positively leaned tandem configurations exhibited a higher total pressure rise than the other configurations, but at the expense of the operating range. On the other hand, a significant improvement in the operating range is observed for the negatively leaned tandem rotor. This, however, comes with a total pressure penalty. For the negatively leaned tandem rotor, a higher mass flow migration towards the tip region is observed. This reduces the effective incidence of the rotor tip. Therefore, a higher stall margin is observed for the negatively leaned tandem rotor. However, a higher tip incidence angle for the +20◦ leaned tandem rotor results in an early breakdown of the forward rotor tip leakage vortex, resulting in a lower stall margin. Although incorporating lean within the design of conventional rotor has certain performance benefits, it appears to be more beneficial for the tip sensitive tandem rotor design.
Volume
10-A
Subjects