Impacts of Tandem Configurations on the Aerodynamic Performance of an Axial Supersonic Through-Flow Fan Cascade

In the current study, the tandem blade technology is applied to an supersonic throughflow fan (STFF) tandem cascade for the first time and a 2D STFF tandem cascade is preliminarily designed. Through the modification design of the tandem airfoils and their configuration (axial overlap (AO) and percent pitch (PP)), the coefficients of total pressure loss and loading are reduced by 4% and 8.58%, respectively. Furthermore, the impact of tandem configurations on the performance is parametrically investigated by numerical simulations. The results indicate that compared with AO, the performance under design incidence is more sensitive to PP except for the cases with PP exceeding a threshold value (1.15). PP dominates the loss and load by controlling the evolution of the FB wake and the shock structure of FB and the rear one of the tandem blade (RB), while AO mainly adjusts the entire shock system structure through the change of virtual shape, resulting in the variation in load distribution between FB and RB. It is worth noting that the overall loading and the total loss remain unchanged with increasing AO except for the tandem configurations (PP = 1.05, AO ≤ −0.01), which make the flow structure in the gap region undergo a fundamental change. With the optimal tandem configuration (PP = 1.05, AO = −0.01) and the modified tandem blades (the ratios of chord length and camber for FB over RB are 0.67 and 0.5, respectively), the total pressure loss coefficient is further reduced by 19.7% in comparison with the preliminary tandem design.