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The tandem airfoil has potential to do more work as a compressor blade than a single airfoil without incurring significantly higher losses. Although tandem blades are sometimes employed as stators, they have not been used in any known commercial rotors. The goal of this work is to evaluate the aerodynamic feasibility of using a tandem rotor in the rear stages of a core compressor. As such, the results are constrained to shock-free, fully turbulent flow. The work is divided into 2-D and 3-D simulations. The 3-D results are subject to an additional constraint: thick endwall boundary layers at the inlet. Existing literature data on tandem airfoils in 2-D rectilinear cascades have been compiled and presented in a Lieblein loss versus loading correlation. Large scatter in the data gave motivation to conduct an extensive 2-D CFD study evaluating the overall performance as a function of the relative positions of the forward and aft airfoils. CFD results were consistent with trends in the open literature, both of which indicate that a properly designed tandem airfoil can outperform a comparable single airfoil on- and off-design. The general agreement of the CFD and literature data serves as a validation for the computational approach. A high hub-to-tip ratio 3-D blade geometry was developed based upon the best-case tandem airfoil configuration from the 2-D study. The 3-D tandem rotor was simulated in isolation in order to scrutinize the fluid mechanisms of the rotor, which had not previously been well documented. A geometrically similar single blade rotor was also simulated under the same conditions for a baseline comparison. The tandem rotor was found to outperform its single blade counterpart by attaining a higher work coefficient, polytropic efficiency and numerical stall margin. An examination of the tandem rotor fluid mechanics revealed that the forward blade acts in a similar manner to a conventional rotor. The aft blade is strongly dependent upon the flow it receives from the forward blade, and tends to be more three-dimensional and non-uniform than the forward blade. / Ph. D.

The unsteady behavior of a tip leakage flow downstream of a simulated axial compressor rotor has been studied. The Virginia Tech low speed linear cascade wind tunnel was adapted to model the unsteady tip leakage flow produced by a rotor operating in the vortical wakes of a set of stator vanes. The cascade, consisting of 8 GE rotor B blades, has adjustable tip gap, inlet angle of 65.1 degrees, turning angle of 11.8 degrees and solidity of 1.076. The cascade Reynolds number, based on blade chord, was 393,000. A moving end wall was used to simulate the relative motion between rotor and casing, and vortex generators attached to the moving end wall were used to produce an idealized periodic unsteady vortical inflow similar to that shed by the junction of a row of inlet guide vanes. Measurements of the vortical inflow to the cascade produced by the generators and of the mean blade loading at the mid span are presented. The periodic and aperiodic behavior of the tip leakage flow downstream of the cascade, produced by this vortical disturbance, is also presented using phase and time averaged 3-component turbulence and pressure fluctuation measurements. These measurements are made for tip gap from 0.83% to 3.3% chord and streamwise locations from 0.772% to 1.117% blade spacing axially downstream of the cascade. The phase averaged inflow measurements reveal that the inflow produced by the vortex generators consists of a pair asymmetric counter-rotating vortices embedded in a thin (4.6% chord) endwall boundary layer. The vortices extend some 7.4% chord from the end wall. Their strength is about two orders smaller than the typical circulation of the tip leakage vortices produced by the cascade. Phase averaged single point three component hot-wire measurements downstream of the cascade reveal that the vortical inflow is, however, capable of producing significant large scale fluctuations in the size, strength, structure and position of the tip leakage vortex. These effects increase in magnitude with increase of tip gap. For small tip gaps these effects appear to be due to simple superposition between the inflow vortices and the tip leakage vortex. However for larger tip gaps these effects appear primarily a consequence of the inflow vortices interfering with the shedding of circulation from the blade tip. The fact that the circulation fluctuation is consistent with the inviscid unsteady loading prediction suggests that the inviscid response may be a major mechanism for generating the tip leakage unsteadiness. Although there is large periodic fluctuation in the tip leakage flow disturbed by the inflow, there is a larger aperiodic component. Two point correlation measurements and linear stochastic estimation are used to reveal the structure of this aperiodic part for a tip gap of 3.3% chord. The aperiodic fluctuation, containing most of the turbulence energy, is found appearing to be organized structures in large scale, and making the estimated instantaneous velocity field significantly different from the phase averaged periodic velocity field. Phase averaged pressure fluctuation measurements made using a microphone in the tip leakage vortex downstream of the cascade reveal that there are significant periodic fluctuating pressure waves and intense mean square fluctuation of the aperiodic fluctuating pressure. They are consistent with the measured periodic flow and aperiodic flow field respectively. These microphone measurements are validated using fluctuating pressure gradient estimates determined from the hot-wire measurements. / Ph. D.

The interaction between rotor blade tip leakage vortex and inflow disturbances, such as encountered in shrouded marine propulsors, was simulated in the Virginia Tech Linear Cascade Wind Tunnel equipped with a moving endwall system. Upstream of the blade row, idealized periodic inflow unsteadiness was generated using vortex generator pairs attached to the endwall at the same spacing as the blade spacing. At three tip gap settings, 1.7%c, 3.3%c and 5.7%c, the flow near the lower endwall of the center blade passage was investigated through three-component mean velocity and turbulence distributions measured by four-sensor hotwires. Besides time-averaged data, the measurements were processed for phase-locked analysis, with respect to pitchwise locations of the vortex generators relative to the blade passage. Moreover, surface pressure distributions at the blade tip were acquired at eight tip gaps from 0.87%c to 12.9%c. Measurements of pressure-velocity correlation were also performed with wall motion but without inflow disturbances. Achieved in this study is an understanding of the characteristics and structures of the tip leakage vortex at its initial formation. The mechanism of the tip leakage vortex formation seems to be independent of the tip gap setting. The tip leakage vortex consists of a vortical structure and a region of low streamwise-momentum fluid next to the endwall. The vortical structure is initially attached to the blade tip that creates it. This structure picks up circulation shed from that blade tip, as well as those from the endwall boundary layer, and becomes stronger with downstream distance. Partially induced by the mirror images in the endwall, the vortical structure starts to move across the passage resulting in a reduction in its rotational strength as the cross sectional area of the vortex increases but little circulation is added. The larger the tip gap, the longer the vortical structure stays attached to the blade tip, and the stronger the structure when it reaches downstream of the passage. Phased-averaged data show that the inflow disturbances cause small-scale responses and large-scale responses upstream and downstream of the vortex shedding location, respectively. This difference in scale is possibly dictated by a variation in the shedding location since the amount of circulation in the vortex is dependent on this location. The inflow disturbances possibly cause a variation in the shedding location by manipulating the separation of the tip leakage flow from the endwall and consequently the flow's roll-up process. Even though this manipulation only perturbs the leakage flow in a small scale, the shedding mechanism of the tip leakage vortex amplifies the outcome. / Ph. D.

The main contributor to the high-cycle fatigue of compressor blades is the response to aerodynamic forcing functions generated by an upstream row of stators or inlet guide vanes. Resonant response to engine order excitation at certain rotor speeds is especially damaging. Studies have shown that flow control by trailing edge blowing (TEB) can reduce stator wake strength and the amplitude of the downstream rotor blade vibrations generated by the unsteady stator-rotor interaction. In the present study, the effectiveness of TEB to reduce forced blade vibrations was evaluated in a modern single-stage transonic compressor rig. A row of wake generator (WG) vanes with TEB capability was installed upstream of the fan blisk, the blades of which were instrumented with strain gages. Data was collected for varied TEB conditions over a range of rotor speed which included one fundamental and multiple harmonic resonance crossings. Sensitivity of resonant response amplitude to full-span TEB flowrate, as well as optimal TEB flowrates, are documented for multiple modes. Resonant response sensitivity was generally characterized by a robust region of substantial attenuation, such that less-than-optimal TEB flowrates could prove to be an appropriate design tradeoff. The fundamental crossing amplitude of the first torsion mode was reduced by as much as 85% with full-span TEB at 1.1% of the total rig inlet flow. Similar reductions were achieved for the various harmonic crossings, including as much as 94% reduction of the second leading edge bending mode resonant response using 0.74% of the rig flow for full-span TEB. At least 32% reduction was achieved for all modal crossings over the broad flow range of 0.5 to 0.9% of the rig flow. Thus the results demonstrate the modal- and flowrate-robustness of full-span TEB for reducing forced response in a modern, closely-spaced transonic compressor. Reduced spanwise TEB coverage was generally found to provide less peak reduction. Widely varying sensitivities of the vibration modes to the spanwise TEB distribution were also noted. While the second chordwise mode experienced roughly the same maximum response reduction of 80% for all of the spanwise TEB configurations, some other modes were amplified from the baseline case under part-span TEB conditions. Part-span TEB was thus found to be less modally-robust than full-span TEB. / Ph. D.

Gas turbine engines provide thrust for aircraft engines and supply shaft power for various applications. They consist of three main components. That is, a compressor followed by a combustion chamber (burner) and a turbine. Both turbine and compressor components are either axial or centrifugal (radial) in design. The combustion chamber is stationary on the engine casing. The type of engine that is of interest here is the gas turbine auxiliary power unit (APU). A typical APU has a centrifugal compressor, burner and an axial turbine. APUs generate mechanical shaft power to drive equipments such as small generators and hydraulic pumps. In airplanes, they provide cabin pressurization and ventilation. They can also supply electrical power to certain airplane systems such as navigation. In comparison to thrust engines, APUs are usually much smaller in design. The purpose of this research was to investigate the possibility of combining the three components of an APU into a single centrifugal rotor. To do this, a set of equations were chosen that would describe the new turbomachinery cycle. They either were provided or derived using quasi-one-dimensional compressible flow equations. A MathCAD program developed for the analysis obtained best design points for various cases with the help of an optimizer called Model Center. These results were then compared to current machine specifications (gas turbine engine, gasoline and diesel generators). The result of interest was maximum specific power takeoff. The results showed high specific powers in the event there was no restriction to the material and did not exhaust at atmospheric pressure. This caused the rotor to become very large and have a disk thickness that was unrealistic. With the restrictions fully in place, they severely limited the performance of the rotor. Sample rotor shapes showed all of them to have unusual designs. They had a combination of unreasonable blade height variations and very large disk thicknesses. Indications from this study showed that the single radial rotor turbomachinery design might not be a good idea. Recommendations for continuation of research include secondary flow consideration, blade height constraints and extending the flow geometry to include the axial direction. / Master of Science

The effects of grid generated free-stream turbulence on compressor cascade performance was measured experimentally in the Virginia Tech blow-down wind tunnel. The parameter of key interest was the behavior of the measured total pressure loss coefficient with and without generated free-stream turbulence. A staggered cascade of nine airfoils was tested at a range of Mach numbers between 0.59 and 0.88. The airfoils were tested at both the lowest loss level cascade angle and extreme positive and negative cascade angles about this condition. The cascade was tested in a Reynolds number range based on the chord length of approximately 1.2-2x106. A passive turbulent grid was used as the turbulence-generating device, it produced a turbulent intensity of approximately 1.6%. The total pressure loss coefficient was reduced by 11-56% at both the "lowest loss level" and more positive cascade angles for both high and low Mach numbers. Oil Visualization and blade static pressure measurements were performed in order to gain a qualitative understanding of the loss reduction mechanism. The results indicate that the effectiveness of an increasing turbulent free-stream on loss reduction, at transonic Mach numbers, depends on whether the shock wave on the suction surface is strong enough to completely separate the boundary layer. At negative cascade angles, increasing free-stream turbulence proved to have a negligible influence on the pressure loss coefficient. At cascade angles where transition exists within a laminar separation bubble, increasing free-stream turbulence suppressed the extent of the laminar separation bubble and led to an earlier turbulent reattachment. / Master of Science

Cascade testing and flow analysis of three high-turning supercritical compressor blades were conducted. The blades were designed at an inlet Mach number (M1) of 0.87 and inlet flow angle of 48.4 deg, with high camber angles of about 55 deg. The baseline blade was a conventional Controlled Diffusion Airfoil (CDA) design and the other two were optimized blades. The blades were tested for an inlet Mach number range from 0.61 to 0.95 and an inlet flow angle range from 44.4 deg to 50.4 deg, at high Reynolds numbers (1.2-1.9x10^6 based on the blade chord). The test results have shown lower losses and better incidence robustness for the optimized blades at higher supercritical flow conditions (M1>0.83). At the design condition, 30% loss reduction was achieved. The blade-to-blade flow was computed by solving the two-dimensional steady Navier-Stokes equations. Experimental results, in conjunction with the CFD flowfield characterization, revealed the loss reduction mechanism: severe boundary layer separation occurred on the suction surface of the baseline blade while no separation occurred for the optimized blades. Furthermore, whether the boundary layer was separated or not was found due to different shock patterns, different shock-boundary layer interactions and different pressure distributions on the blades. For the baseline blade, the strong passage shock coincided with the adverse pressure gradient due to the high blade front camber at 20% chord, leading to the flow separation. For the optimized blades, the high blade camber shifted to more downstream (30-40% chord), resulting in stronger flow leading edge acceleration, less strength of the passage shock near the blade surface, favorable pressure gradient right after the passage shock, thus no flow separation occurred. The flow understanding obtained by the current research can be used to guide the design of high-turning compressor blades at higher supercritical flow conditions. / Ph. D.