Effects of Rotating Inlet Distortion on Compressor Stability With Stall Precursor-Suppressed Casing Treatment

Abstract

This paper conducts an experimental research of rotating inlet distortion on a low-speed large size test compressor with emphasis on the stability problem of axial fan/compressors, and the stall margin enhancement with a kind of stall precursor-suppressed (SPS) casing treatment. Some results on compressor stall margin and prestall behavior under the restriction of rotating inlet distortion are presented. The experimental results show that whether the inlet distortion is co-rotating or counter-rotating, the SPS casing treatment can still improve the stall margin without leading to additional efficiency loss caused by such configuration. The experiment results also show that the mechanism of the stall margin improvement with such casing treatment is associated with delaying the nonlinear development of the stall precursor waves and weakening the unsteady flow disturbances in a compression system.