Experimental and Numerical Investigation of Three-Dimensional Viscous Flows and Vortex Motion Inside an Annular Compressor Blade Row

Abstract

A detailed experimental and numerical investigation was carried out to examine the three-dimensional flow field, secondary flows, and vortex motion in an annular compressor cascade. Various flow visualizations near the blade surface and endwalls, wall static pressure and loss measurements, as well as hot-film and hot-wire measurements inside the blade boundary layers were performed at various flow rates to understand the complex flow phenomena. A Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes equation was solved to investigate the flow numerically. The detailed comparison between measurement and numerical prediction indicates that the complex three-dimensional flow phenomena (corner stall, vortex motion, radial mixing, etc.) are very well predicted with the numerical method.