Dependency of Unsteady Time-Linearized Flutter Investigations on the Steady State Flow Field

The influence of the steady state flow solution on the aero-elastic stability behaviour of an annular compressor cascade shall be studied in order to determine sensitivities of the aero-dynamic damping with respect to characteristic flow parameters. In this context two different flow regimes — a subsonic and a transonic case — are subject to the analysis. The pressure distributions, steady as well as unsteady, on the blade surface of the NACA3506 profile are compared to experimental data that has been gained by the Institute of Aeroelasticity of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) during several wind tunnel tests at the annular compressor cascade facility RGP-400 of the Ecole Polytechnique Fe´de´rale de Lausanne (EPFL). Whereas a certain robustness of the unsteady CFD results can be stated for the subsonic flow regime, the transonic regime proves to be very sensitive with respect to the steady state solution.