Prediction of Turbulence Ingestion Forces for Rotors With Arbitrary Rake and Skew

Abstract

It is well known that turbomachinery rotors produce low frequency forces when subjected to a turbulent inflow. Predictions to date have been based largely upon idealizations of radial blades operating in homogeneous isotropic turbulence. In the present work these models are slightly extended to include the effects of complex blade geometry. The credibility of the method is then tested through comparison to existing experimental data. These comparisons show that the method performs well regarding the shape of the frequency spectrum and the relative effects of complex blade geometries. However, the method tends to sometimes overestimate the absolute levels of the thrust spectra.