CENTRIFUGAL STAGE PERFORMANCE PREDICTION AND VALIDATION FOR HIGH MACH NUMBER APPLICATIONS
Steve Kowalski is an Aero-Thermo Engineer in the Research and Development Department of DresserRand. His responsibilities include the design, development and analysis of aerodynamic components of centrifugal compressors. He has been employed at Dresser-Rand since 2007. He holds a B.S. degree from Michigan State University (Mechanical Engineering, 2002) and an M.S. degree from Michigan State University (Mechanical Engineering, 2005). Prior to joining Dresser-Rand, he worked as a teaching/research assistant at Michigan State University.
Towards Centrifugal Compressor Stages Virtual Testing
Flow features inside centrifugal compressor stages are very complicated to simulate with numerical tools due to the highly complex geometry and varying gas conditions all across the machine. For this reason, a big effort is currently being made to increase the fidelity of the numerical models during the design and validation phases. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) plays an increasing role in the assessment of the performance prediction of centrifugal compressor stages. Historically, CFD was considered reliable for performance prediction on a qualitatively level, whereas tests were necessary to predict compressors performance on a quantitatively basis. In fact "standard" CFD with only the flow-path and blades included into the computational domain is known to be weak in capturing efficiency level and operating range accurately due to the under-estimation of losses and the lack of secondary flows modeling. This research project aims to fill the gap in accuracy between "standard" CFD and tests data by including a high fidelity reproduction of the gas domain and the use of advanced numerical models and tools introduced in the author's OEM in-house CFD code. In other words, this thesis describes a methodology by which virtual tests can be conducted on single stages and multistage centrifugal compressors in a similar fashion to a typical rig test that guarantee end users to operate machines with a confidence level not achievable before. Furthermore, the new "high fidelity" approach allowed understanding flow phenomena not fully captured before, increasing aerodynamicists capability and confidence in designing high efficiency and high reliable centrifugal compressor stages.
Effect of Relative Velocity Distribution on Efficiency and Exit Flow of Centrifugal Impellers
The major problem for designing centrifugal compressors is to attain high stage efficiency as well as a wide operating range. High stage efficiency is customarily attained by the optimization of design parameters using a one-dimensional loss analysis including the relationship between the flow behavior and total pressure losses for limited types of compressors.Copyright © 1983 by ASME