This paper investigates numerically the effects of shrouded stator seal cavity flows on a high-speed, six-stage, advanced axial-flow compressor performance. Two cases of fully three-dimensional unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes simulations are performed. The first case includes only the main flow path without cavities, while the second case takes into account the effect of cavities by fully meshing and solving the seal cavity flows under each of the stator vanes. Both simulations included rotor blade tip clearances. The latter case showed 1.7 point degradation in efficiency from the first case. Contributors to the overall performance degradation, such as windage heating, mixing loss due to seal leakage flow with the main flow, and additional loss of the rotors and stators due to alteration in velocity triangles, are identified by comparing the two simulation results. Compared to theoretical or semi-empirical leakage and windage models, higher loss production and temperature rise are found especially in mid to rear stages. Unsteady effects for such differences are discussed.

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