Rotating stall and stall-controlled performance of a single stage subsonic axial compressor

Abstract

Activities by various authors on aerodynamics and control dynamics of rotating stall in axial compressor are first traced. Then, a process of stall cell evolution in a subsonic stage is discussed based on a 2-D CFD. A few numbers of vortices grow ahead of the rotor accumulating vorticity ejected from lightly stalled blades, and eventually organize a cell of circumferentially aligned huge vortices, which merge and recess repeatedly during the rotation. Such stall disturbance is intensified on trailing side of a circumferential inlet distortion and decays on the leading side. Considering these features, a new algorithm for stall warning is developed based on a correlation between pressure waveforms at each passing of a fixed blade. A remarkable change in the correlation level at near-stall provides a warning signal prior to the stall onset with sufficiently large time margin. This scheme is applied to achieve rotating stall prevention by actuating flaps installed on the hub. The last issue is on characteristics of forward swept blade which has much increased throttle margin with decreased tip loss. A 3-D computation shows that a secondary vortex generated in suction surface mid span interacts to reduce the tip leakage vortex that initiates the stall.