Affiliation:
1. University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, Sackville Street, Manchester 1
Abstract
Measurements of the static pressure distribution along a vane are compared with the predictions of potential flow theory for a straight radially bladed rotor revolving in a large water tank. At very large angles of incidence, the observed pressures depart from the ideal values by a factor several times greater than the local pressure difference across the blade. Under conditions of radial outflow, however, the pressure difference integrated over the area of the blade has a moment about the axis which is within 16 per cent of the torque calculated from potential flow over a wide range of flow rate. For inflow, the correlation of blade pressures with potential flow is greatly improved by imparting pre-swirl to reduce the tangential component of the inlet relative velocity.