Variations of the shock and secondary flow structure in a transonic compressor cascade with outlet back pressure

The effects of back pressure on the transonic cascade operating state are crucial and can determine the structure of internal shock waves and secondary flows. In this paper, numerical methods validated by experiments were employed to investigate the evolution mechanisms of the inlet flow field, shock structure, secondary flow structure, and cascade performance under different back pressures. Analysis revealed that transonic cascade exhibited unique incidence characteristics in the inlet flow field under both subsonic and supersonic regimes, although these two regimes involved different physical mechanisms. The results revealed that the operating state of the transonic compressor cascade under the unique incidence condition was influenced by the outlet back pressure, and there existed a critical static pressure ratio. The critical static pressure ratio shifted from 1.61 for two-dimensional flow to 1.37 for three-dimensional (3D) flow at M-1 = 1.1, due to the corner separation and the characteristics of 3D shocks. The 3D shock structure exhibited a non-uniform distribution along the spanwise direction due to the influence of back pressure and the separated boundary layer. The vortex structures analysis revealed that the secondary flow structure on the sidewalls of the transonic compressor cascade was primarily dominated by corner vortices, whose formation mechanism was related to the interaction between the shock wave and the sidewall boundary layer. Additionally, this interaction also led to the formation of detached shock and lip shock vortex structures. Finally, loss analysis indicated that the wake region of the transonic cascade primarily includes six types of loss, and the total loss of the cascade decreased with the rise in back pressure.