Performance of a Subsonic Compressor Airfoil With Upstream, End-Wall Injection Flow

The performance of a compressor stator airfoil with end-wall injection was studied experimentally and computationally. The geometry was a high-speed, subsonic, linear cascade. The independent variables studied were airfoil incidence angle and mass flow rate of end-wall injection upstream of the stator. The end-wall injection was intended to simulate upstream “leakage” through hardware gaps in the end-walls of gas-turbine engines. The exit of the cascade was interrogated experimentally by a five-hole-probe and a total pressure Kiel probe to provide total pressure measurements, which were used to calculate total pressure loss coefficients at the exit of the test section. Computational studies were completed to examine the end-wall flow physics and entropy generating mechanisms through the stator section. The experimental results showed a distinct decrease in the downstream total pressure field with end-wall injection flow, and the impact of the upstream injection on the stator loss coefficient was not a function of the incidence angle. The computational investigation found that the majority of the end-wall injection’s effect on the downstream total pressure field was observed as an increase in the size of the secondary flows on the suction-side of the stator near the upper end-wall.