Study on the combined influence of aerodynamic sweep and casing treatment in a transonic compressor rotor

Casing treatment and three-dimensional blade design are effective techniques to remedy the deficiency of compressor stability margin, yet their combined effects on compressor performance are seldom studied. With the help of URANS simulations, this paper explored the combined influence of aerodynamic sweep and casing treatment in a transonic compressor rotor. Compared with the configurations of single sweep and single casing treatment, the combined configuration presented an outstanding advantage for improving compressor performance. For compressor overall performance, the stall margin improvement of combined configuration was up to 11.8%, larger than single forward sweep and single casing treatment. Meanwhile, peak efficiency penalty of combined configuration (−1.02%) was significantly lower than that of single casing treatment. Under the effect of casing treatment, the results showed that the pulsating axial velocity could effectively delay the interface of the tip leakage flow and main flow, preventing the overflow of tip leakage flow. The distributions of blockage coefficient and loading coefficient indicated that combined configuration was more effective due to tip unload by casing treatment and blockage resistance ability by forward sweep. Furthermore, the spatial and temporal evolutions of axial velocity at slot opening surface were discussed in detail. Compared with the single casing treatment, higher positive axial velocity excitation and smaller range of negative axial velocity were introduced by combined configuration, which contributed to better stability enhancement.