A Comparative Study of Numerical Methods on Aerodynamic Characteristics of a Compressor Rotor at Near-stall Condition

Abstract

The present work performs three-dimensional flow calculations based on Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) and Delayed Detached Eddy Simulation (DDES) to investigate the flow field of a transonic rotor (NASA Rotor 37) at near-stall condition. It is found that the DES approach is likely to predict well the complex flow characteristics such as secondary vortex or turbulent flow phenomenon than RANS approach, which is useful to describe the flow mechanism of a transonic compressor. Especially, the DES results show improvement of predicting the flow field in the wake region and the model captures reasonably well separated regions compared to the RANS model. Besides, it is discovered that the three-dimensional vortical flows after the vortex breakdown from the rotor tip region are widely distributed and its vortex structures are clearly present. Near the rotor leading edge, a part of the tip leakage flows in DES solution spill over into next passage of the blade owing to the separation vortex flow and the backflow is clearly seen around the trailing edge of rotor tip. Furthermore, the DES solution shows strong turbulent eddies especially in the rotor hub, rotor tip section and the downstream of rotor trailing edge compared to the RANS solution.