Unsteady tip clearance flow pattern in an isolated axial compressor rotor with micro tip injection

A numerical study of the effect of discrete micro tip injection on unsteady tip clearance flow pattern in an isolated axial compressor rotor is presented, intending to better understand the flow mechanism behind stall control measures that act on tip clearance flow. Under the influence of injection the unsteadiness of self-induced tip clearance flow could be weakened. Also the radial migration of tip clearance vortex is confined to a smaller radial extent near the rotor tip and the trajectory of tip clearance flow is pushed more downstream. So the injection is beneficial to improve compressor stability and increase static pressure rise near rotor tip region. The results of injection with different injected mass flow rates show that for the special type of injector adopted in the paper the effect of injection on tip clearance flow may be different according to the relative strength between these two streams of flow. For a fixed injected mass flow rate, reducing the injector area to increase injection velocity can improve the effect of injection on tip clearance flow and thus the compressor stability. A comparison of calculations between single blade passage and multiple blade passages validates the utility of single passage computations to investigate the tip clearance flow for the case without injection and its interaction with injected flow for the case with tip injection.