Development of rotating stall cell under coexisting phenomena of surge and rotating stall in an axial-flow compressor

The relationship between the growth of the stall cell and variation in the surge behavior was experimentally investigated. The aim of this study was to reveal the effect of the stall cell on the surge behavior from the viewpoint of the inner flow structure. In the experiment, the unsteady compressor characteristics during the surge and rotating stall were obtained by using a precision pressure transducer and a one-dimensional single hot-wire anemometer. Under the coexisting states of surge and rotating stall, various surge behaviors were observed by throttling the mass flow rate. When the flow rate was set such that the surge behavior switched, an irregular surge was observed. During the irregular cycle, two different cycles were selected randomly corresponding to the stall behavior. When the amplitude of the plenum pressure is relatively large among the measurement results, the absolute value of the time-change rate in the flow coefficient and the static pressure-rise coefficient tend to be high. This shows that the flow field during stable operation near the peak point of the unsteady characteristics changes rapidly. In this case, an auto-correlation function of the wall-pressure fluctuation data showed that the stall inception of the compressor was induced earlier in the large cycle compared with the case of the top cycle. When studying the growth of the stall cell during the stalling process of the large cycle, the wall-pressure fluctuation data showed that the stall cell rapidly grew by gathering more than one spike-type disturbance into one stall cell. In this case, the stall cell fully expanded along the circumferential direction and developed into a deep stall. Therefore, the key factors that determine the surge behavior are the sudden change in the flow field near the peak point of the unsteady characteristics and the rapid growth in the stall cell during the stalling process.