Investigation on the aerodynamic performance of high camber turning angle cascade with tubercle leading edge

Abstract

In order to improve the performance of high-loaded compressor stator with large camber turning angle, a stator cascade blade with tubercle leading edge was designed based on the wavy leading edge of humpback’s flipper, and computational fluid dynamics simulation was carried out. The results show that the tubercle leading edge can effectively improve the aerodynamic performance of the stator cascade at high attack angles, and the total pressure loss coefficient can be reduced by 26.46%. The main reason why the tubercle structure improves the performance is that it makes the radial displacement of airflow appear as a butterfly-like structure at the leading edge of the blade, which restrains the occurrence and development of airflow separation. By comparing the performance of the blades with full-span and part-span tubercle leading edges, it is considered that the tubercle leading edge of 80% blade height in the mainstream region can improve the aerodynamic performance of cascade better, while the one of 50% blade height has the worst effect.