Performance and Boundary Layer Development of a High Turning Compressor Cascade at Sub- and Supercritical Flow Conditions

Based on current numerical investigations, the present paper reports on new Q2D midspan-calculations and results for the well known high turning (Δβ = 50°) supercritical (Ma₁ = 0.85) compressor cascade V2. A Q2D treatment of the problem was chosen in order to avoid the difficult modelling of the porous endwalls in a corresponding 3D approach. All simulations were done with the RANS solver TRACE of the DLR Cologne in combination with modified versions of the Wilcox turbulence model and Langtry/Menter transition model. Existing experimental Q2D midspan-results for the V2 compressor cascade were used to demonstrate the improved ability of the numerical code to determine performance characteristics, blade pressure and Mach number distributions as well as boundary layer parameter and velocity distributions. The loss characteristics show minimum loss regions when plotted against inlet angle or axial velocity density ratio. Within these regions, increasing with decreasing Mach number, the experimental results were adequately predicted. Outside these regions it turned out difficult to reproduce the experimental results due to increasing boundary layer separation. Furthermore, the prediction quality was very good for subsonic conditions (Ma₁ = 0.60) and still reasonable for supercritical conditions (Ma₁ = 0.85), where shock/boundary layer interaction made the prediction more difficult.