Effect of J-Shaped Casing Treatment on Flow Stability and Performance of an Axial Compressor

Casing Treatment (CT) is one of the passive methods to increase the stability margin of the compress and hence that of the aircraft jet engines. In this paper, a novel J-shaped axial CT slot geometry is designed and numerically analysed for its effect on the performance of a single stage NACA transonic compressor. The predicted performance of the isolated rotor was validated by comparing with the published experimental results. The predicted efficiency of the baseline transonic rotor agreed well with experimental data, but the total pressure ratio was under predicted over the entire operating range. The J-shaped CT slots, with 100% axial coverage over the rotor tip chord, were able to extend the stall mass flow rate by almost 19.45% compared to the baseline rotor, accompanied with a slight reduction in rotor efficiency by 1.42%. The high pressure air entered the slots at rotor exit and flowed back through the slots and the plenum, and ejected at the rotor inlet to energise the low momentum end wall flow. The interaction of main inlet flow and the ejected flow having large tangential component of velocity, had favourable effect on the rotor incidence angle, and hence on rotor stall margin.