Computation and Simulation of Wake-Generated Unsteady Pressure and Boundary Layers in Cascades: Part 1—Description of the Approach and Validation

Abstract

The unsteady pressure and boundary layers on a turbomachinery blade row arising from periodic wakes due to upstream blade rows are investigated in this paper. A time-accurate Euler solver has been developed using an explicit four-stage Runge–Kutta scheme. Two-dimensional unsteady nonreflecting boundary conditions are used at the inlet and the outlet of the computational domain. The unsteady Euler solver captures the wake propagation and the resulting unsteady pressure field, which is then used as the input for a two-dimensional unsteady boundary layer procedure to predict the unsteady response of blade boundary layers. The boundary layer code includes an advanced k–ε model developed for unsteady turbulent boundary layers. The present computational procedure has been validated against analytic solutions and experimental measurements. The validation cases include unsteady inviscid flows in a flat-plate cascade and a compressor exit guide vane (EGV) cascade, unsteady turbulent boundary layer on a flat plate subject to a traveling wave, unsteady transitional boundary layer due to wake passing, and unsteady flow at the midspan section of an axial compressor stator. The present numerical procedure is both efficient and accurate in predicting the unsteady flow physics resulting from wake/blade-row interaction, including wake-induced unsteady transition of blade boundary layers.