Axial compressor

About: Axial compressor is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 12035 publications have been published within this topic receiving 127766 citations.

Development of Three-Dimensional Turbulent Boundary Layer in an Axially Rotating Pipe

Abstract: The time-mean velocities and turbulent fluctuations inside the turbulent boundary layers which developed in an axially rotating pipe were measured in the case where an undeveloped flow with a rectangular axial velocity distribution was introduced in the pipe. The pipe rotation gives two counter effects on the flow: one is a destabilizing effect due to a large shear caused by the rotating pipe wall and the other is a stabilizing effect due to the centrifugal force of the swirling velocity component of the flow. The destabilizing effect prevails in the inlet region, but the stabilizing effect becomes dominant in the downstream sections. The intensity of turbulence in the rotating pipe decreases ultimately below that in a stationary state of the pipe. Using the experimental results, the relationship between the mixing length and Richardson number proposed by Bradshaw was examined for the turbulent boundary layer that develops in the rotating pipe.

Compressor Efficiency Variation With Rotor Tip Gap From Vanishing to Large Clearance

Abstract: Compressor efficiency variation with rotor tip gap is assessed using numerical simulations on an embedded stage representative of that in a large industrial gas turbine with Reynolds number ∼ 2 to 7×106. The results reveal three distinct behaviors of efficiency variation with tip gap. For relatively small tip gap (less than 0.8% span), the change in efficiency with tip gap is non-monotonic with an optimum tip gap for maximum efficiency. The optimum tip gap is set by two competing flow processes: decreasing tip leakage mixing loss and increasing viscous shear loss at the casing with decreasing tip gap. An optimum tip gap scaling is established and shown to satisfactorily quantify the optimal gap value. For medium tip gap (0.8%–3.4% span), the efficiency decreases approximately on a linear basis with increasing tip clearance. However, for tip gap beyond a threshold value (3.4% span for this rotor), the efficiency becomes less sensitive to tip gap as the blade tip becomes more aft-loaded thus reducing tip flow mixing loss in the rotor passage. The threshold value is set by the competing effects between increasing tip leakage flow and decreasing tip flow induced mixing loss with increasing tip gap. Thus, to desensitize compressor performance variation with blade gap, rotor should be tip aft-loaded and hub fore-loaded while stator should be tip fore-loaded and hub aft-loaded as much as feasible. This reduces the opportunity for clearance flow mixing loss and maximizes the benefits of reversible work from unsteady effects in attenuating the clearance flow through the downstream blade-row. The net effect can be an overall compressor performance enhancement in terms of efficiency, pressure rise capability, robustness to end gap variation and potentially useful operable range broadening.© 2012 ASME

Experimental Study of a High-Throughflow Transonic Axial Compressor Stage

Abstract: Design information and experimental results are presented for a transonic axial compressor stage passing 40 lbs/s-ft/sup 2/ frontal area (195 Kg/s-m/sup 2/) with a pressure ratio of 1.95 at 1500 ft/s (457 m/s) tip speed. The design incorporates several unusual features that helped it achieve a peak isentropic efficiency over 88 percent at design speed. The compressor was evaluated at three rotor tip clearances and an optimum was found. Vortex generators placed upstream on the casing proved relatively ineffective in influencing stall margin. Vortex generators installed on the rotor did improve stall margin and also increased efficiency at speeds of 90 percent and below.

Enhancement of Mass Transfer in a Spray Tower Using Swirling Gas Flow

Abstract: Spray towers are commonly used in the chemical and process industries for a number of applications including absorption, desorption and humidification. However, the main disadvantage of a spray tower compared with that of a packed tower is its lower contact efficiency. The present study is concerned with the enhancement of mass transfer between a continuous gas phase and liquid droplets in a spray tower by imparting swirl to the axial gas flow through the tower. It is well known that swirling flow has the ability to augment the rates of heat and mass transfer. Experimental investigations into the hydrodynamics and mass transfer in a laboratory-scale spray tower for air-NH3/H2O system using axial and swirling gas flows have been carried out. The hydrodynamic studies included measurements of the gas velocity distributions and overall pressure drop in the tower, and characterization of water sprays generated by a pressure-swirl nozzle where radial liquid distributions, droplet size and its distribution and mean droplet size in terms of SMD were measured. As for the mass transfer performance of the spray tower, the effect of the gas and liquid flow rates on the overall gas phase mass transfer coefficient, Kga, was investigated for both swirling and non-swirling axial gas flows in order to quantify the effect of swirl. It has been found that Kga increases with increasing gas/liquid flow rates and imparting swirl in the gas flow enhances Kga up to 20% compared with that in axial flows. Correlations of Kga as a function of the gas/liquid flow rates, and also as a function of the gas flow rate and initial droplets SMD are developed. A design methodology to determine the height of a spray tower required to achieve a specified amount of removal of a solute from a gas mixture is proposed.

Improving Efficiency of a High Work Turbine Using Nonaxisymmetric Endwalls— Part I: Endwall Design and Performance

Abstract: This paper is the first part of a two part paper reporting the improvement of efficiency of a one-and-half stage high work axial flow turbine by non-axisymmetric endwall contouring. In this first paper the design of the endwall contours is described and the CFD flow predictions are compared to five-hole-probe measurements. The endwalls have been designed using automatic numerical optimization by means of an Sequential Quadratic Programming (SQP) algorithm, the flow being computed with the 3D RANS solver TRACE. The aim of the design was to reduce the secondary kinetic energy and secondary losses. The experimental results confirm the improvement of turbine efficiency, showing a stage efficiency benefit of 1%±0.4%, revealing that the improvement is underestimated by CFD. The secondary flow and loss have been significantly reduced in the vane, but improvement of the midspan flow is also observed. Mainly this loss reduction in the first row and the more homogeneous flow is responsible for the overall improvement. Numerical investigations indicate that the transition modeling on the airfoil strongly influences the secondary loss predictions. The results confirm that non-axisymmetric endwall profiling is an effective method to improve turbine efficiency, but that further modeling work is needed to achieve a good predictability.Copyright © 2008 by ASME