The Vortex-Filament Nature of Reverse Flow on the Verge of Rotating Stall

Abstract

On the verge of rotating stall, very orderly reverse flow forms from the outlet of the rotor/impeller along the casing/shroud toward the inlet in axial/centrifugal compressors (Koch, 1970; Haupt, et al., 1987). The experiment on a centrifugal compressor reveals furthermore that the reverse flow is composed of stable spiral vortex filaments. Their vorticity can be transferred to the inlet tip vortex, known as prerotation. The behavior of these vortex filaments is examined based on the fundamental research work on rotating bodies available in the literature. This result shows that the vortex filaments are composed of Taylor’s vortex pairs, but with unequal vortex strengths within the pair. They form the transition range from a laminar to a turbulent three-dimensional boundary layer with a very steep tangential velocity profile. This profile is associated with the appearance of a toroidal ring vortex in the rotor/impeller, acting as a recirculatig secondary flow. It can be further shown from the analysis of the extensive literature that the orderly path of the reverse flow is enabled by the cessation of the leakage flow of the rotor tip clearance. The reason for this is that the growing tangential flow field extends beyond the rotor tip up to the close proximity of the endwall, so that the tip clearance is blocked.