Effect of Moving Endwall on Hub Leakage Flow of Cantilevered Stator in a Linear Compressor Cascade

The cantilevered stator has the advantages of reducing mass and axial length of highly loaded compressor. The details of the hub leakage flow resulting from the clearance between the high-speed moving hub and the cantilevered stator hub are unclear. In this paper, the effect of a moving endwall on the hub leakage flow of a cantilevered stator in a linear compressor cascade was studied. After the simulation method was verified with the experimental results, the time-averaged results of unsteady Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes (URANS) were selected to study a case with a hub clearance of 2 mm. The results show that the effect of the moving endwall of the cantilevered cascade on the general characteristics with below 30% span increases the leakage mass flow rate and reduces the static pressure coefficient at three conditions of 0°, 6°, and −7° incidences, and the change is most significant at −7° incidence. The effect of the moving endwall on the total pressure loss coefficient varies with different operating conditions, which decreases by 15.94% at 0° incidence, and increases by 4.77% and 18.51% at 6° incidence and −7° incidence, respectively. The influence of the moving endwall is below 14% span at −7° incidence, below 23% span at 0° incidence, and below 30% span at 6° incidence. These effects correspond to the static pressure coefficient and the difference of static pressure coefficient representing the blade loading. When designing the cantilevered stator and matching between the stages of a multistage compressor, the quantitative research results of this paper have certain guiding significance. © 2022, Shanghai Jiao Tong University.