Experimental and numerical research on blended blade and end wall technique in a compressor cascade

Abstract

In this paper, to explore the effects and mechanisms of the blended blade and end wall (BBEW) technique on corner separation control, two different BBEW configurations, including the side blended blade and end wall (S-BBEW) and full blended blade and end wall (F-BBEW), are studied and compared through experimental and numerical analyses. First, for a linear cascade, the S-BBEW and F-BBEW designs are carefully built. Then, both numerical simulations and experiments are conducted for each design, demonstrating a significant reduction in the loss coefficient. The results indicate that the S-BBEW is effective in the control of boundary layer development and delays the initial point of separation, especially at the design working condition. Moreover, the F-BBEW design nearly eliminates the corner separation by the control of both boundary layer development and secondary flow, which provides a higher performance improvement, especially at a large incidence angle.