Experimental Verification of a Practical Engineering Design Method for Mixed-Flow Compressor Stages

Abstract The mixed-flow compressor has high efficiency and pressurization ability even at an extremely high flow rate. However, so far the design principle of the mixed-flow compressor has not well been established. In this paper, a novel and practical design method of mixed flow impellers is developed, in which the meridional construction needs few control parameters, and easily applied to engineering product design. In order to verify the developed method, a mixed-flow impeller with flow rate coefficient of 0.2374 is designed and manufactured for the experimental study. The experimental results show that the peak efficiency of the compressor at the machine Mach number of 0.6 and 0.8 reach 85.17% and 85.20%, respectively, which are competitively well-performed at large flow coefficient in the published literature. The comparison between experimental and numerical results verifies the feasibility and effectiveness of this proposed method and also provides some valuable guidance for the choice of the exit inclination angle of the mixed-flow impellers.