Exploration of a new-type grooved casing treatment configuration for a high-speed small-size centrifugal compressor

Abstract

The main design target for a casing treatment device is to increase the stall margin of a given compressor without sacrificing efficiency. In this article, numerical and experimental investigations about a new-type grooved casing treatment configuration are presented for a high-speed small-size centrifugal compressor. Different from traditional grooved casing treatments, in which the grooves are always placed over the rotor (for both axial and radial compressors), one or several circumferential casing grooves are placed along the shroud side of the diffuser passage in this configuration, to enhance the stall margin of the compressor. Computational fluid dynamics analysis is performed under stage environment in order to find the optimum location of the circumferential casing groove for the subsequent experiments in consideration of stall margin enhancement and peak efficiency gain, and the impact of groove number to the effect of this new-type grooved casing treatment configuration in enhancing the stall margin of the compressor stage is studied. It is found that stall margin gain due to the existence of circumferential casing grooves arises from the suction–reinjection effect of the low momentum fluid and its transportation along the circumferential and streamwise directions in the grooves and the grooves located at the middle and rear part of the diffuser casing wall have more pronounced effect in expanding the stall margin of the centrifugal compressor. In order to verify the effectiveness of this new-type grooved casing treatment configuration, the solid casing compressor and the compressors with circumferential casing grooves are tested in our test rig. The results indicate that this new-type grooved casing treatment configuration can obtain obvious improvement in the stall margin without sacrificing peak efficiency. Also, the numerical investigation is conducted for the entire compressor with circumferential casing grooves and the result is compared with the experimental data.