Numerical Study of Deterministic Fluxes in Compressor Passages

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has been widely adopted in the compressor design process, but it remains a challenge to predict the flow details, performance, and stage matching for multistage, high-speed machines accurately. The Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) simulation with mixing plane for bladerow coupling is still the workhorse in the industry and the unsteady bladerow interaction is discarded. This paper examines these discarded unsteady effects via deterministic fluxes using semi-analytical and unsteady RANS (URANS) calculations. The study starts from a planar duct under periodic perturbations. The study shows that under large perturbations, the mixing plane produces dubious values of flow quantities (e.g., whirl angle). The performance of the mixing plane can be considerably improved by including deterministic fluxes into the mixing plane formulation. This demonstrates the effect of deterministic fluxes at the bladerow interface. Furthermore, the front stages of a 19-blade row compressor are investigated and URANS solutions are compared with RANS mixing plane solutions. The magnitudes of divergence of Reynolds stresses (RS) and deterministic stresses (DS) are compared. The effect of deterministic fluxes is demonstrated on whirl angle and radial profiles of total pressure and so on. The enhanced spanwise mixing due to deterministic fluxes is also observed. The effect of deterministic fluxes is confirmed via the nonlinear harmonic (NLH) method which includes the deterministic fluxes in the mean flow, and the study of multistage compressor shows that unsteady effects, which are quantified by deterministic fluxes, are indispensable to have credible predictions of the flow details and performance of compressor even at its design stage.