Development of a Preliminary Design Method for Subsonic Splittered Blades in Highly Loaded Axial-Flow Compressors

This paper presents a model for predicting the reference minimum-loss incidence and deviation angles of a blade arrangement with splitter vanes, which is probably a solution for future ultra-highly loaded axial compressor designs. The motivation of the modeling is to guide the blading design in splittered compressor design processes where the additional splitter vanes must be specially considered. The development of the model is based on a blade performance database from systematic numerical simulations. Basic correlations of the model are firstly proposed, which consider dominant blade geometry parameters related to blade loading, including camber angle and solidity. Secondly, geometric and aerodynamic corrections about orientation parameter, blade maximum thickness, inlet Mach number, and three-dimensional (3D) effects are empirically incorporated into the basic correlations. Eventually, a subsonic 3D splittered rotor is designed using the correlations coupled with the corrections obtained from the validation of the model. The results indicate that the model is able to achieve a good agreement within an error band of ±1.0° for the predictions of both reference minimum-loss incidence and deviation angles, and the rotor designed using the model accomplishes the desired work input and flow deflection.