Numerical Investigation of Centrifugal Compressor Radial Inlet

Abstract

Efficient compressors designs reduce the overall energy consumption of industrial buildings. The inlet chambers for turbocompressors have a significant influence on the whole stage operation. An uneven flow in the inlet of an impeller can turn up to be the cause of stage efficiency drop, and also it is able to narrow down the range of its operational stability which in turn is an essential negative factor. Currently, there is no clear methodology of the design of the inlet radial chambers which makes it difficult to design the compressor. The purpose of this work is to develop recommendations for the designing problem formulation of the centrifugal compressor radial inlet chamber and also modify the existing design method for inlet chambers. During the previous research, the most acceptable model of the inlet chamber was obtained with the help of real and numerical experiment. In this paper, different geometric parameters of the inlet chamber are changed and then calculated by means of numerical experiment. Their influence on the inlet chamber loss coefficient, relative velocity distribution and static pressure coefficient is investigated.