Experimental and Numerical Investigations of Solidity Effects on Surface Pressure Distributions of Axial Compressor Blade Cascades

Before studying a particular compressors and fan stages, it will useful to study the behavior of flow through the blade rows of cascade. Cascade data consist of variations of losses, surface pressure distributions, outlet flow angle in terms of Reynolds number, inlet Mach number and solidity. The compressor designer needs cascade information not only to select the profile that satisfies his design requirements, but also to check on the performance of the blade sections at off design. It is therefore essential that the blade element data covers a wide range of operation if the designers assess the overall characteristics of his stage. Flow characteristics are studied using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) technique. Results are confined to variations of surface pressure distributions versus solidity. Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes equations are solved using Reynolds stress model (RSM) and realizable k-ε turbulence modeling. Finally, numerical results are compared to those obtained through our tests which showedclose agreements.