Swept Blade Aerodynamic Effects of Compressor Airfoil

To meet the needs of efficient compressor airfoil designs, a CFD prediction of complex 3D flow fields in turbine blade passages has been incorporated in the design process. Owing to the numerous advantages of 3-D CFD technology, a number of compressor manufacturers already adopt a 3D blading technique. In addition, blade lean and sweep have been implemented to increase the blade row efficiency. Experimental studies have shown the advantages of these features. However, most of the experimental results showed other combined features, which makes it difficult to determine the effects of individual features. The development of CFD techniques has made it possible to do three-dimensional turbulent flow analyses in a very short time. In this study, numerical studies are presented to investigate the sweep effects on a transonic compressor airfoil. The focus of this study is to investigate the sweep effects without changing other compressor blade features; i.e. keeping the blade out flow angle and section shape to be the same for all cases. The purpose of the study is to enhance the understanding of the sweep effect in a transonic compressor rotor blade. The results showed that the sweeps redistribute the flow reducing the secondary flow loss, depending on the baseline. It was shown that a forward sweep reduces the tip loading in terms of the static pressure coefficient.