Experimental and Numerical Investigation of a Subsonic Compressor With Bend Skewed Slot Casing Treatment

Based on the test results of discrete axial and blade angle slot casing treatment, a new type of casing treatment was designed for a subsonic axial flow compressor rotor by optimising various geometry parameters. To obtain a wide operating range and to minimize penalties in terms of isentropic efficiency, seven compressor configurations incorporating casing treatments of 0%, 16.6%, 33.3%, 50%, 66.6%, 83.3% and 100% rotor exposure were experimentally investigated. The results showed that significant improvements in stall margin are possible in all exposures and insignificant isentropic efficiency sacrifices are recorded in some exposures. Nearly 21.43% stall margin improvement in terms of the corrected mass flow rate was achieved with 33.3% rotor blade tip axial chord exposure. The compressor build with 16.6% rotor exposure was the best configuration in terms of maximum isentropic efficiency gain. The second issue of the paper was to offer a contribution to the understanding of the physical mechanism by which bend skewed slot casing treatment improve stall margin under subsonic conditions. By applying a concept similar to “Domain Scaling” approach (as often used in multistage turbomachinery Flow-fields) to the interface between the rotor blade passage and end-wall treatments, a time-dependent 3-dimentional numerical simulation was performed for the subsonic axial-flow compressor rotor with bend skewed slot casing treatment. The numerical results agreed well with experimental results. Detailed analyses of the coupled flow through bend skewed slot casing treatment and rotor blade passage under subsonic conditions led to some preliminary conclusions as to the flow physics involved in the stall margin improvements afforded by the use of bend skewed slot casing treatment.