Aerodynamic instabilities modeling under asymmetric boundary in a centrifugal compressor for turbocharger

The increasing demand for compression systems with high pressure ratio and wide safety margin has set new prerequisites for designers to meet the industrial needs without increasing the manufacturing costs excessively. In this work, the turbulent stability of the vaneless diffuser of the centrifugal compressor was analyzed. Unsteady Reynolds-averaged numerical simulations of the isolated diffuser and full annular diffuser with or without circumferential asymmetric boundary conditions downstream were performed. And a continuous adjoint approach was adopted, which is rarely applied in the stability analysis of compressor flow. Then, the origin of instability under different inflow and outflow conditions was sought with a sensitivity analysis. The prediction of the growth rate reveals that the flow near the shroud dominates the global stability of the diffuser. When connected with an impeller in the upstream direction, the most unstable region is localized at the backflow regions near the outlet. The wave number, however, is altered under the impact of the jet-wake flow. When connected to a circumferential asymmetric condition, the structural sensitivity of the vaneless diffuser with a radius ratio of 1.53 indicates that the interaction between the inlet reverse flow and outlet backflow is responsible for the occurrence of stall. The most unstable regions are localized at the region 90°–135° away from the volute tongue. The present work mainly contributes to the instabilities identification with novel sensitivity methods under asymmetric boundary conditions.