An Experimental Facility with the High-Speed Moving Endwall for Axial Compressor Leakage Flow Research

The moving endwall has a great influence on the development and stability of axial compressor leakage flow. This paper presents a novel experimental facility with a high-speed moving endwall for studying axial compressor leakage flow. The uniqueness of the design concept is that using a large disk simulates the high-speed moving endwall. When R/C-x = 16, theoretical analysis shows that the maximum linear velocity difference is about 2.5% while the maximum axial velocity difference of the mid-three passages is less than 5%. Single-passage simulations show that the disk radius of R/C-x = 16 can achieve an acceptable accuracy in terms of static pressure, total pressure, and density flow. Seven-passage simulations confirm that the mid-three passages have small errors from the axial velocity difference. Subsequently, preliminary experimental results obtained from the experimental facility are presented. The results reveal that the moving endwall significantly changes the distributions of the total pressure loss and static pressure coefficient. The relative difference in the averaged total pressure loss between the experiment and CFD is 11.33% and 7.69% for the static and moving endwall, respectively. It is expected that the experimental facility will make more useful contributions to the understanding of axial compressor leakage flow in the future.