The compound bowing design in a highly loaded linear cascade with large turning angle

Abstract

Numerical simulation was carried out to study the influences of blade-bowing designs based on a highly loaded cascade with large turning angle, while the compound bowing design showed much lower endwall loss than the conventional design in this study. Generally, it showed that the increased turning angle would strengthen the adverse pressure gradient on the suction surface, so the side effect of negative blade bowing angle would be enhanced because of the reduced flow filed stability near suction–endwall corner. However, the positive corner bowing angle that applied in the compound bowing design would enhance the flow field stability near the suction–endwall corner by adjusting spanwise pressure gradient and velocity triangle, so the side effect of negative blade bowing angle would be suppressed and lead to weaker secondary flow. In detail, the blade bowing angle (as well as the corner bowing angle in the conventional bowed cascades) was varied from −5° to −30° in this study, while the reductions of the loss coefficient in the compound bowed cascades were about 0.662.16 times higher (the absolute differences were about 0.0067 0.0097) than the corresponding conventional bowed cascades. Moreover, the Reynolds number and Mach number at the outlet plane were kept at 2.4 × 105 and 0.6, respectively, during the bowing design to ensure the comparability.