Effects of water ingestion on the tip clearance flow in compressor rotors

Abstract

The tip region of compressor rotors may be filled with water when aircraft is flying in heavy rain environment. In order to explore the effects of water ingestion on the compressor performance and the characteristics of tip clearance flow, the Euler–Lagrange method has been utilized to simulate the two-phase flow inside a transonic rotor (NASA rotor 35). The typical trajectory of water droplet in compressor has been introduced firstly to simply understand the situation of water ingestion and to verify the reliability of some special droplet breakup models. The simulation results show that water droplets will change the distribution of airflow parameters along the span direction, which leads to the decrease of mass flow rate and the increase of attack angle at the tip region, as well as the separation of boundary layer on the suction surface. Furthermore, the momentum losses caused by droplet impingement and breakup directly causes a sharp increase in the static entropy at the blade tip region. On the other hand, the ingestion of droplet brings an external disturbance to airflow, and although it has some dissipated effects on the turbulence kinetic energy, it aggravates the unsteady characteristics of turbulent flow seriously at the tip region. Finally, by comparing the compressor performance under wet and dry states, it can be concluded that the pressure ratio and adiabatic efficiency of compressor decrease after water ingestion, and the compression efficiency drops by 1–2% on the whole while the operating point moves forward and the stable working boundary becomes narrow.

Transient influence of water injection on the flow field of a hot launch in a W-shaped silo

“…A large number of flows existing in nature and technology are a mixture of phases, and there are generally three approaches to describe them: the Euler–Euler approach for the continuous fluid multiphase, the Euler–Lagrange approach for a mixture of continuous fluid phase and discrete dispersed phase 25 and the Lagrange–Lagrange approach for the discrete dispersed multiphase. 26,27 The Euler–Euler approach is suitable for the mixing of hot gas jet and cold water and fierce evaporation.…”

Influence of Jet Parameters on the Aero Engine Cleaning Flow Field

“…It was concluded that as the water content increases, the loss of characteristics increases, the working range is shortened, the flow angle changes, higher clogging occurs in the tip section of the flow and tip losses lead to additional energy losses and performance degradation. Yang and Zhang [8] investigated the effect of incoming water on the performance of a compressor and the characteristics of the tip gap flow. Simulation results show that water droplets change the distribution of airflow parameters along the span direction, leading to a decrease in mass flow velocity and an increase in the angle of attack in the tip region, as well as the separation of the boundary layer at the suction surface.…”

Influence of wet compression on aerodynamic performance and stability boundary of transonic compressor

“…Luo et al 21 compared the influence of inlet water spray and tip water spray on the compressor stall boundary and found that both of them can broaden the compressor stall boundary. Yang et al 22 numerically investigated the effect of water ingestion on tip clearance flow in compressor rotors when aircraft is flying in a heavy rain. They found that the unsteady characteristic of tip leakage flow will be amplified, and both the pressure ratio and efficiency of compressor decrease after water ingestion.…”