Experimental and Numerical Characterization of Transonic Compressor Subjected to Inlet Distortion

In this work we show preliminary results of an experimental and numerical investigation of a transonic axial compressor subjected to a 90 degree circumferential inlet total pressure distortion. The fundamental goal of the investigation is to establish an experimental dataset to be used in the validation of numerical simulation tools. The special interest of this investigation is the ability of the advanced blade row tools such as harmonic balance to reproduce the experimental results. Therefore, this report is account of the initial work of the ongoing project of the validation of advanced blade row tools in ANSYS CFX. Measurements of the compressor’s performance and efficiency were obtained by “traversing” the distortion around the test article inlet over 24 separate experiments. The resultant 2-D total pressure and total temperature contours at three measurement stations are shown. The experimental instrumentation package also included high sampling frequency rotor casing static pressure measurements and high sampling frequency rotor exit total pressure measurements. Phase locked averaged casing static pressure and rotor exit total pressure at four locations relative to the inlet distortion are shown. The initial set of computations presented in this paper concentrate on a full annulus transient simulation conducted in preparation for the harmonic analysis simulations.