Analysis of the Operational Condition of the Rotor Blade for a Transonic Compressor with Circumferential Total Temperature Distortion

Total temperature distortion severely threats the safety of the compressor. Previous studies typically focus on the overall performance of the compressor, and how the working condition of a single rotor blade changes when it rotates across the distorted and undistorted region is less understood. In this study, steady simulations of a transonic compressor with clean inflow are conducted and validated with the experimental data. Thereafter, unsteady simulations with a 500 K, 180◦ circumferential total temperature distortion are performed to obtain the distorted compressor characteristic. The distorted isentropic efficiency of the compressor is increased and the underlying mechanism is explained. In the last section, the orbit method is introduced and adopted to analyze the corrected mass flow and pressure ratio of the rotor at different circumferential positions. It is found that the effect of the total temperature distortion is the alternation of the rotational speed of the rotor. The rotor is most vulnerable when it just leaves the low total temperature region and enters the high total temperature region, where the stall can be initialized. © 2023 Science Press. All rights reserved.