Evolution of unsteady flow near rotor tip during stall inception

Previously the features of circumferential propagation of self-induced tip leakage flow unsteadiness for a low speed isolated axial compressor rotor in the authors’ laboratory were discovered and investigated via numerical simulation, which only occurs below a critical stable flow point that is close to but not yet at the stall limit. Further in this paper, the detailed investigation on evolution of tip leakage flow during the throttling process into spike rotating stall was conducted by adopting the valve-throttling model. During this process, the development of the circumferential propagation of tip leakage flow unsteadiness was especially focused on. According to the unsteady characteristics of pressure signals, the evolvement of compressor flow field can be classified into four stages. As compressor throttled, the oscillation frequency of self-induced unsteady tip leakage flow decreased gradually, and thus resulted in the decrease of its circumferential propagation speed. The circumferential propagation of self-induced tip leakage flow unsteadiness is closely related with rotating instability. When the forward spillage of tip leakage flow at the leading edge occurred, the spike type rotating stall was initiated. Its flow structures were given in the paper.