Stall and surge are strong limitations in the operating range of compressors and thus one of the major limits of jet engine performance. A promising way to push the stability limit of compression machines is to inject a small amount of flow at the blade tip to alter the physical mechanism responsible for stall onset. This study focuses on the experimental performance of such a system. To do so, an axial compressor test bench was equipped with 40 actuators connected to an auxiliary pressurised air supply system. They were able to generate high-speed jet blowing just at the tip of the rotor blades. The opening of each actuator was controlled by an electromagnetic valve. This allowed generating continuous or pulsed jets with frequencies up to 500 Hz at different duty cycles. The performance of the control system was investigated for various control strategies, where the injected flow rate, the injection angle, the number of injectors, the jet frequency and the duty cycle were systematically varied. This paper is concluded by a study of the energy balance of the system for various configurations. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this constitutes a rarely seen analysis in the literature.
This paper describes the experimental study of the flow behavior in a rotor blade channel of an axial compressor equipped with an Active Flow Control (AFC) system using Particle Image Velocimetry. The AFC system consists of 40 actuators connected to an auxiliary supply pressure system. It is used to extend the stable operating range and to improve the performance of the compressor. The system is able to generate high speed jets blowing just at the tip of the rotor blades. PIV data are obtained at three radial positions (at 18%, 51% and 79% of the blade height) in the inter-blade channel region. The PIV results are discussed to analyze the effect of the control system on the compressor internal flows.
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