Experimental Investigation on the Effect of Porosity of Bend Skewed Casing Treatment on a Single Stage Transonic Axial Flow Compressor

Abstract

A bend skewed casing treatment was designed, to study the influence of one of its geometrical parameter porosity on the stable performance of single stage transonic axial flow compressor. The compressor was designed for the stage total-to-total pressure ratio of 1.35, corrected mass flow rate of 22 kg/s at corrected design speed of 12930 RPM. Bend skewed casing treatment has an axial inlet segment till 50% of the total length and rear segment that is skewed by 45° in the direction of the rotor tip section stagger. Both the sections were oriented at a skew angle of 45° to the radial plane such that the flow exiting the slot is in counter-clockwise direction to that of the rotor direction. The casing treatment slot width was equal to the maximum thickness of the rotor blades. Three casing treatment configurations were identified for the current experimental investigation. All the treatment geometries considered for the experimental research have lower porosities than reported in the open literatures. The effect of the porosity parameter on the performance of transonic compressor stage was evaluated at two axial coverages of 20% and 40% relative to the rotor tip axial chord. Performance maps were obtained for the solid casing and casing treatment with three different porosities. Comparative studies were carried out and experimental results showed a maximum of 65% improvement in the stable operating range of the compressor for one of the treatment configurations. It was also observed that the stable operating range of the compressor increases with an increase in the casing treatment porosity. All the casing treatment configurations showed that the compressor stall occurs at lower mass flows as compared to the solid casing. Compressor stage peak efficiency shows significant degradations with increase in the porosity as compared to solid casing. Detailed blade element performances were also obtained using calibrated multi-hole aerodynamic probe. Comparative variations of flow parameters like absolute flow angle, Mach number were studied at full flow and near stall conditions for the solid casing and casing treatment configurations. Hot wire measurements show very high fluctuation in the inlet axial velocity in the presence of solid casing as compared to casing treatments. Experimental investigation revealed that the porosity of the casing treatments has strong influence on the transonic compressor stage performance.