Effects of Loading Level on the Variation of Flow Losses in Subsonic Axial Compressors

The development of the aircraft industry seeks an increase in compressor loading, bringing unique flow phenomena and design problems; thus, insights into the ultrahigh loaded compressor are in great need. To reveal the loss characteristics of the ultrahigh loaded subsonic axial compressors, four well comparable compressor stages are carefully designed with the loading coefficient varying from 0.41 to 0.65. A novel flow-based loss decomposition method is performed to investigate the variation of different kinds of losses (including blade profile loss, tip leakage loss, casing endwall loss, and hub endwall loss) with the change in compressor loading level and operating condition. Results show that the blade profile loss always occupies the largest part of the total loss. In rotor passages, the percentage of the blade profile loss at the design point is increased from 69% to 76% with the increase in the compressor loading. Meanwhile, the proportion of the tip leakage loss decreases as the loading increases. For a specific compressor stage, the total loss of the rotor passage tends to increase with the increase in stage pressure rise coefficient along the operation line, whereas the proportion of the blade profile loss is squeezed by the tip leakage loss. As for stator passages, the proportion of blade profile loss to the total passage loss is nearly constant along the compressor operating line, but increases from 79% to 90% with the increase in the compressor loading level. By correlating the losses with blade solidity, it was found that the increase in flow losses in the highly loaded compressor, i.e., the decrease in efficiency, stems mainly from the high blade solidity.