Experimental and Numerical Investigation on the Aerodynamic Performance of a Compressor Cascade Using Blended Blade and End Wall

The design of blended blade and end wall had been proved to be useful in delaying, reducing, and eliminating the corner separation at the compressor. But an experience hasn't been made to verify the numerical study yet. In order to make up for the problem, this paper makes an experiment to verify that the design of blended blade and end wall can promote the aerodynamic performance through an NACA65 diffusion cascade with the turning angle 42 degrees. Based on the experiment, the numerical study was made through two different turbulence model RNG-KE, and SST. Then the details of the flow field and the effect of the blended blade and end wall design on the corner separation are discussed and analyzed through the SST results. The experiment shows that the design of blended blade and end wall can improve the performance of the cascade when the incidence angle was positive or at the design point, and the total pressure loss coefficient was reduced by 7%-8%. The numerical study shows that the design of the blended blade and end wall can have a good effect on the corner flow of the cascade. The strong 3-d corner separation caused by the stack of the flow happened at the tail end of the suction side was avoided, and the flow losses of the prototype cascade were reduced.