To achieve aggressive specific fuel consumption goals, aircraft engines are tending toward higher overall pressure ratios and higher bypass ratios for turbofans. As sizes decrease to meet these requirements, centrifugal compressors become a viable option as the last stage of the high pressure compressor. The last stages of an axial compressor in a small core engine face reduced efficiency due to the relatively large tip clearances with respect to blade height, and therefore, it may be more appropriate to finish the final compression stage with a low specific speed centrifugal compressor. A new facility, the Centrifugal STage for Aerodynamics Research (CSTAR) Facility, has been developed at Purdue University in cooperation with Rolls-Royce to gain further understanding of the complex aerodynamics found in such centrifugal compressors. The experimental data acquired in this facility will be utilized to develop and validate design tools for centrifugal compressors used in axial-centrifugal high-pressure compressors. The facility models the last (centrifugal) stage of an axial-centrifugal compressor and operates at engine-representative Mach numbers. In this paper, the facility is described in detail, and the baseline steady-state performance of the compressor is presented.

Steps required for proper acquisition and processing of laser Doppler velocimetry data for turbomachinery research applications are addressed. Turbomachinery applications are difficult due to the small internal passages, high-frequency fluctuations, large turbulence intensities, and strong secondary flows resulting in low overall signal-to-noise ratios and narrowband noise sources that cannot be removed by simple band-pass filters. Special aspects that must be considered for successful and accurate laser Doppler velocimetry studies to be conducted in turbomachinery are discussed. Specifically, the design of the measurement volume size, reflection mitigation, engineering of seed particle size and injection schema, and alignment of the traverse mechanism are addressed in terms of their importance (from literature sources) and the solutions implemented by the authors. These techniques have been applied to successfully obtain three-component, unsteady velocity data in a high-speed centrifugal compressor for aeroengine application. Processing techniques are also presented including a novel mixture-model-based statistical method for narrowband noise isolation developed by the authors. The method, validation steps, and example results are presented, showing the successful rejection of noise with high accuracy, a low failure rate, and a significant reduction in required manual inspection. This newly developed method elucidated flow features that were not clear prior to the noise removal.

Modern turbomachinery faces increased performance demands in terms of efficiency, compactness, and pressure-rise. Advancements in computational technology have allowed numerical methods to become the backbone of design development efforts. However, the unique complexities of centrifugal compressor flow-fields pose difficult computational problems. As such, advanced experimental methods must be used to obtain high-quality datasets to further inform, improve, and validate computational methods in complex flow regimes. Recent experimental work on a high-speed centrifugal compressor has provided detailed, unsteady, three-component velocity data using Laser Doppler Velocimetry. A passage vortex is present and its nascent tied to the increased incidence at mid-span associated with impeller wake flow. This vortex begins in the hub-pressure side corner and grows to fill the passage and become temporally stable. The vortex development is unsteady in nature and the unsteady effects persist 40% downstream of the throat. Distinct jet and wake flow patterns from the impeller also do not agglomerate until 40% downstream of the throat. Additionally, the critical impact of the unsteady flow development on the time-averaged flow-field is explained.

Modern turbomachinery faces increased performance demands in terms of efficiency, compactness, and pressure-rise. Advancements in computational technology have allowed numerical methods to become the backbone of design development efforts. However, the unique complexities of centrifugal compressor flow-fields pose difficult computational problems. As such, advanced experimental methods must be used to obtain high-quality data sets to further inform, improve, and validate computational methods in complex flow regimes. A recent experimental work on a high-speed centrifugal compressor has provided detailed, unsteady, three-component velocity data using laser Doppler velocimetry. A passage vortex is present, and its nascent tied to the increased incidence at mid-span associated with impeller wake flow. This vortex begins in the hub-pressure side corner and grows to fill the passage and become temporally stable. The vortex development is unsteady in nature, and the unsteady effects persist 40% downstream of the throat. Distinct jet and wake flow patterns from the impeller also do not agglomerate until 40% downstream of the throat. Additionally, the critical impact of the unsteady flow development on the time-averaged flow-field is explained.

This paper presents rotordynamic data obtained within a test facility studying the aerodynamics of a high-speed centrifugal compressor for aero-engine applications. The experimental overhung compressor is supported by two rolling element bearings. The compressor-end ball bearing is supported by an oil-fed squeeze film damper. After some period of operation, the compressor began to exhibit a unique nonlinear increase in the rotordynamic response followed by an unexpected subsynchronous whirl instability as the speed continued to increase. Finally, as the rotor speed was increased further, the rotor re-stabilized. A numerical model of the compressor system was created using a commercially available software suite. This model indicates the effective weight of the damper support has a significant effect on the frequency of the second critical speed. Increasing this weight causes the second critical speed, originally predicted at 35,200 RPM, to shift down to 15,650 RPM. This increase in the support weight is due to inertial interaction between the damper support and the surrounding static structure. The increased shaft deflection that occurs as the rotor passes through this shifted critical speed causes the damper to lockup, resulting in the increased response observed experimentally. At a slightly higher speed, Alford-type aerodynamic cross-coupling forces excite the two subsynchronous critical speeds. Finally, as the rotor departs from the second critical speed, the damper unlocks and is able to effectively suppress the Alford-type instabilities, allowing the rotor to return to stable operation.