Comparison of Theoretical and Experimental Data for an Oscillating Transonic Compressor Cascade

Abstract

Numerical and experimental results are compared for a compressor cascade performing harmonic oscillations in transonic flow. The flow field was calculated by a Q3D Navier Stokes code, the basic features of which are the use of an upwind flux difference scheme for the convective terms, the implementation of an effective one-equation turbulence model and the use of deforming multi-block grids. The experimental investigations were performed in an annular cascade windtunnel where unsteady blade pressures were measured for two different operating conditions of the cascade. The present data were all obtained for tuned torsional modes where the blades performed pitching oscillations with the same frequency and amplitude, but with a constant interblade phase angle. In the first test case the steady flow around the blades was purely subsonic. For the second test case the compressor cascade was run under transonic flow conditions where a normal shock in the front part of the blades’ suction side is followed by a blade passage shock. It becomes apparent that under subsonic flow conditions the predicted aerodynamic damping coefficients are in resonable agreement with the experimental data, although the numerical pressure amplitudes are much higher than the measured ones. In transonic flow significant discrepancies between computed and experimentally determined pressure amplitudes are observed, whereas the accuracy of the pressure phase prediction is comparable to the subsonic test case. Another important result of these investigations is that oscillations of the blade passage shock lead to strong variations of the local aerodynamic damping of the blades, but do not significantly change the global damping coefficient of the tested compressor cascade.