The increasing performance demands of modern aero engines necessitate the integrated design of compressor transition ducts with upstream components to reduce the axial length of the engine. However, this design approach narrows the spacing between the stator and the strut, making traditional research on transition ducts only with struts unsuitable. The numerical results and experimental oil flow visualization results were utilized to reconstruct the three-dimensional flow structures in the stator passages under various operating conditions. Additionally, numerical methods were employed to analyze the mechanisms of the strut’s effect on the upstream stator in an aggressive transition duct. The results show that the strut potential field increases the load on the upstream stator, leading to severe blade surface separation and corner separation/stall, and redistributes the inflow angle of the upstream stators circumferentially, resulting in significant differences in the flow structures within the stator passages on both sides. The separation flows within the stator passages mainly manifest in five types: pressure surface separation vortex, suction surface concentrated shedding vortex, suction surface separation vortex, suction surface-corner stall separation vortex, and suction surface separation vortex pair. Under different operating conditions, the separation flows within the stator passages are always composed of a part of these five types or a transitional state between two of them.

Uncertainties in the aerodynamic performance of compressors, introduced by manufacturing variations, have received more and more attentions in recent years. The deviation model plays a crucial role in evaluating this uncertainty and facilitating robust design. However, current deviation models with a few variables cannot simultaneously achieve a precise geometric approximation of deviation and provide an accurate assessment of performance uncertainty. This paper introduces a novel deviation modeling method named Nested Principal Component Analysis (NPCA) to break this tradeoff. In this method, both geometry-based and performance-based modes are utilized to describe manufacturing variations. By considering aerodynamic sensitivity, surface deformations that significantly impact aerodynamic performance can be extracted for deviation modeling. To demonstrate the superiority of this newly proposed method, ninety-eight newly manufactured compressor rotor blades were measured using a coordinate measurement machine, and both NPCA and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) were employed to model the real manufacturing variations. The results indicate that, in comparison to the PCA method, the NPCA method achieves an equivalent level of accuracy in geometric reconstruction and evaluation of mean performance. Furthermore, the same level of accuracy can be obtained with eight NPCA modes and fifty PCA modes when assessing the scatter in aerodynamic performance. Finally, the working mechanism of the NPCA method for accurate uncertainty quantification was further investigated.

Manufacture variations can greatly increase the performance variability of compressor blades. Current robust design optimization methods have a critical role in reducing the adverse impact of the variations, but can be affected by errors if the assumptions of the deviation models and distribution parameters are inaccurate. A new approach for robust design optimization without the employment of the deviation models is proposed. The deviation package method and the interval estimation method are exploited in this new approach. Simultaneously, a stratified strategy is used to reduce the computational cost and assure the optimization accuracy. The test case employed for this study is a typical transonic compressor blade profile, which resembles most of the manufacture features of modern compressor blades. A set of 96 newly manufactured blades was measured using a coordinate measurement machine to obtain the manufacture variations and produce a deviation package. The optimization results show that the scatter of the aerodynamic performance for the optimal robust design is 20% less than the baseline value. By comparing the optimization results obtained from the deviation package method with those obtained from widely-used methods employing the deviation model, the efficiency and accuracy of the deviation package method are demonstrated. Finally, the physical mechanisms that control the robustness of different designs were further investigated, and some statistical laws of robust design were extracted.

The variable cycle engine is distinguished by its highly adjustable compression system, whose aerodynamic characteristic is extremely complex. To explore the regulation range of a double bypass engine compression system, a multi-dimensional analysis method is developed, through which the coupling mechanism between the compressor component and the bypass is examined. The operation zones of the compressor components and the bypass system are proposed, and the operation range of the compression system is obtained by calculating the overlapping part of the operation zones. The results show that in the double bypass mode, there exists a minimum mode selector valve area and a minimum core driven fan stage stall margin that ensures a feasible bypass flow, the two parameters correspond to each other. Under the given fan and core driven fan stage conditions, the maximum value of the inner bypass ratio is restricted by the upper limit of the forward variable area bypass injector and the maximum Mach number in the total bypass, while the minimum value of the inner bypass ratio depends on the lower limit of the forward variable area bypass injector geometry and the system recirculation margin. The single bypass mode is a unique condition of the double bypass mode, as the operation zone of the compressor component degenerates from a two-dimensional surface to a straight line. There are multiple bypass states available in the single bypass mode, while the regulation range of the bypass ratio is jointly restricted by the operation range of the high pressure compressor and the aerodynamic boundary of the forward variable area bypass injector.

Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) is a well-developed and contactless technique in experimental fluid mechanics, but the strong velocity gradient and streamline curvature near the wall substantially limits its accuracy improvement. This paper presents a data processing procedure combining conventional PIV and newly developed Mirror Interchange (MI) based Interface-PIV for the measurement of the boundary layer parameter development in the blade leading edge region. The synthetic particle images are used to analyze the measurement errors in the entire procedure. Overall, three types of errors, namely the errors caused by the Window Deformation Iterative Multigrid (WIDIM) algorithm, the discrete data interpolation and integration, and the wall offset uncertainty, comprise the main measurement error. Specifically, the errors due to the discrete data interpolation and integration and the WIDIM algorithm comprise the mean bias, which can be corrected through the error analysis method proposed in the present work. Meanwhile, the errors due to the WIDIM algorithm and the wall offset uncertainty contribute to the measurement uncertainty. Computational fluid dynamics-based synthetic particle flows were generated to verify the newly developed PIV data processing procedure and the corresponding error analysis method. Results showed that the data processing method could improve the accuracy of PIV measurements for boundary layer flows with high curvature and acceleration and even with significant flow separation bubbles. Finally, the data processing method is also applied in a PIV experiment to investigate the boundary layer flows around a compressor blade leading edge, and several credible boundary flow parameters were obtained.

It is confirmed that tandem-blade configurations have potential to enlarge the flow turning in two-dimension (2D) studies. However, the potential of tandem blades to enlarge the design space for highly loaded axial compressors was rarely investigated in open literatures. The present work aims to show the capability of tandem blades to break the loading limit of conventional blades for highly loaded compressors. The 2D models of the maximum static pressure rise derived in previous work were validated by a large amount experimental data, which showed a good agreement. An E parameter was defined to evaluate the stall margin of compressor based on the theoretical models, which indicated that the tandem blade was able to increase the loading limit of axial compressors. A single-blade stage with a loading coefficient of 0.46 (based on the blade tip rotating speed) was designed as the baseline case under the guidance of the E parameter. A tandem-blade stage was then designed by ensuring that the velocity triangles were similar to the single-blade stage. The performances of both stages were investigated experimentally. The results showed that the maximum efficiency of the tandem-blade stage was 92.8%, 1% higher than the single; the stall margin increased from 16.9% to 22.3%. Besides, the maximum pressure rise of tandem rotors was beyond the loading limit of 2D single-blade cascades, which confirmed the potential of tandem blades to break the loading limit of axial compressors.