Importance of Nonequilibrium Modeling for Compressors

Abstract

This paper investigates the importance of non-equilibrium boundary layer modelling for three compressor blade geometries, using RANS and high fidelity simulations. We find that capturing non-equilibrium effects in RANS is crucial to capturing the correct boundary-layer loss. This is because the production of turbulence within the non-equilibrium region affects both the loss generation in the non-equilibrium region, but also the final equilibrium state. We show that capturing the correct non-equilibrium behaviour is possible by adapting industry standard models (in this case the k-omega SST model). We show that for the range of cases studied here, non-equilibrium effects can modify the trailing-edge momentum thickness by up to 40 percent, and can change the trailing-edge shape factor from 1.8 to 2.1.