Axial Compressors

Recent advances in transonic axial compressor aerodynamics
Roberto Biollo, Ernesto Benini

n
University of Padova, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, Via Venezia 1, Padova 35131, Italy
a r t i c l e i n f o
Keywords:
Transonic compressors
Aerodynamic design
Casing treatment
Aerodynamic optimization
a b s t r a c t
Transonic axial ow compressors are fundamental components in aircraft engines as they make it
possible to maximize pressure ratios per stage unit. This is achieved through a careful combination of
both tangential ow deections and, above all, by taking advantage of shock wave formation around
the rotor blades. The resulting ow eld is really complex as it features highly three-dimensional
inviscid/viscous structures, strong shock-boundary layer interaction and intense tip clearance effects
which negatively inuence compressor efciency. Complications are augmented at part load operation,
where stallrelated phenomena occur. Therefore, considerable research efforts are being spent, both
numerically and experimentally, to improve efciency and stall margin at peak efciency and near stall
operation. The present work aims at giving a complete review of the most recent advances in the eld
of aerodynamic design and operation of such machines. A great emphasis has been given to highlight
the most relevant contribution in this eld and to suggest the prospects for future developments.
& 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Contents
0. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1. Basic aerodynamics of transonic compressors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Blade proles studies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3. Three-dimensional shaped bladings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4. Casing treatments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.1. Circumferential groove-type treatments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.2. Slot-type treatments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
5. Air injection excitation and bleeding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
5.1. Air injection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
5.2. Bleeding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
6. Future prospects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
6.1. Zero net mass ux active ow controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
6.2. Tandem rotor bladings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
6.3. Counter-rotating rotors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
7. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
0. Introduction
Transonic axial ow compressors are today widely used in
aircraft engines to obtain maximum pressure ratios per single-
stage. Fig. 1 shows the fan of the EJ200 engine as an example for
highly loaded, high performance transonic rotors.
High stage pressure ratios are important because they make it
possible to reduce the engine weight and size and, therefore,
investment and operational costs. Performance of transonic com-
pressors has today reached a high level but engine manufacturers
are oriented towards increasing it further. A small increment in
efciency, for instance, can result in huge savings in fuel costs and
determine a key factor for product success. Another important
target is the improvement of rotor stability towards near stall
conditions, resulting in a wider working range.
Important analytical and experimental research in the eld
of transonic compressors was carried out since 1960s (e.g.,
Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect
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Progress in Aerospace Sciences
0376-0421/$ - see front matter & 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paerosci.2012.05.002
n
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: ernesto.benini@unipd.it (E. Benini).
Please cite this article as: Biollo R, Benini E. Recent advances in transonic axial compressor aerodynamics. Progress in Aerospace
Sciences (2012), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paerosci.2012.05.002
Progress in Aerospace Sciences ] (]]]]) ]]]]]]
[18,31,33,57,62,100]). Transonic compressors were developed
quite in parallel to the investigation of supersonic compressors,
which represent the rst development line in the eld of highly
loaded axial ow compressors (e.g., [35,63,64,79]). A considerable
contribution for the new developments and designs was succes-
sively given by the progress made in optical measurement
techniques and computational methods, leading to a deeper
understanding of loss mechanisms of supersonic relative ows
in these machines (e.g., [17,43,66,71,80,101]).
A closer look at the trend in design parameters over the last
decades (Fig. 2) shows that, especially in civil aircraft engines, the
relative ow tip Mach number of the rotor is limited to maintain
high efciencies. A current typical value for the rotor inlet relative
ow at the tip is Mach E1.3. The continuous progress of
aerodynamic design has been focused to the increase in efciency
and pressure ratio and to the improvement in off-design behavior
at roughly the same level of the inlet relative Mach number.
Todays high efciency transonic axial ow compressors for civil
aviation give a total pressure ratio in the order of 1.71.8, realized by
combining high rotor speeds (tip speed in the order of 450 m/s) and
high stage loading (2Dh/u
2
in the order of 1.0). The rotor blade
aspect ratio parameter showed a general trend towards lower values
during past decades, with an outlier below 1.0.
1. Basic aerodynamics of transonic compressors
The ow eld that develops inside a transonic compressor
rotor is extremely complex and presents many challenges to
compressor designers, who have to deal with several and con-
curring ow features such as shock waves, shock/boundary layer
interaction, intense secondary ows, etc., inducing energy losses
and efciency reduction [16,25,29,58,88,87,95].
Fig. 3(a) shows a schematic blade-to-blade shock conguration
that can be found in a transonic compressor rotor in consequence of
the deection imposed by the blade pressure side wall to the relative
ow. The shock starts from the blade leading edge and propagates
into the blade passage. Depending on rotor geometry and operating
condition, the shock can develop in different ways. It can be more or
Fig. 1. Euroghter typhoon engine EJ200 (image from www.eurojet.de).
Fig. 2. Trend of characteristic design parameters of transonic fans and compressors over the last decades [99].
Fig. 3. Shock wave conguration inside a transonic compressor rotor [10]. (a) Shock
conguration-sketch and (b) Impact of operating condition (constant wheel speed).
R. Biollo, E. Benini / Progress in Aerospace Sciences ] (]]]]) ]]]]]] 2
less inclined to the incoming ow. It can bifurcate. Further shock
waves can also develop downstream inside the blade passage.
Fig. 3(b) shows the shock conguration inside a generic transonic
compressor rotor, moving fromthe choking condition to the near stall
condition and maintaining a constant wheel speed. Generally, the
shock shifts upstream and becomes normal to the incoming ow as
the operating point moves towards lower mass ow operating
conditions, as a consequence of the higher ow incidence due to
the lower mass ow rate. This can also be observed in Fig. 4 which
shows some 3-D views of the shock front at both peak efciency and
near stall conditions in a low hub/casing ratio transonic rotor.
At the outer half span region, the shock impacts strongly on
the blade suction side and interacts negatively with the local
boundary layer. Due to the adverse pressure gradient across the
shock, a signicant increment of boundary layer thickness is
induced (Fig. 5) and a separation bubble can occur. In case of
separation, the boundary layer may reattach before the trailing
edge or not. If not, larger and deeper blade wakes develop, leading
to a considerable increment of aerodynamic losses.
A strong outward radial uid migration is also observed inside
the suction side boundary layer after the interaction with the shock.
This characteristic ow phenomenon is sketched in Fig. 6. It induces
an accumulation of low momentum uid at the outer span region
which is considered to be detrimental for rotor stability, and causes
a boundary layer thickening with a further negative impact on blade
wake development.
Shock waves result in many other negative ow phenomena,
such as blockage [83], corner stall separation [40,98], upstream
wakes destabilization [32,60,69], etc. Particularly detrimental is
the interaction with the tip clearance ow at the outer span of the
rotor, where the compressor generally shows the higher entropy
production [7,22,24,36,47,70,84].
The pressure difference between the suction side and pressure
side drives the uid through the blade tip gap, inducing a jet
which propagates into the main ow (Fig. 7). The interaction
between the jet and the main ow gives rise to a vortex (known
as tip clearance vortex or tip leakage vortex) which generally
starts at the leading edge and develops into the passage. The
complex ow structures arising from the interaction between the
vortex, the casing boundary layer and the passage shock have
detrimental effects on the overall rotor performance.
As the compressor moves from peak to near stall operating
points, the blade loading increases and ow structures become
stronger and unsteady. The tip leakage vortex can breakdown
interacting with the passage shock wave, leading to not only a
large blockage effect near the tip but also a self-sustained ow
oscillation in the rotor passage. As a result, the blade torque, the
low energy uid ow due to the shock/tip leakage vortex inter-
action and the shock-induced ow separation on the blade
suction surface uctuate with time [106]. Such uctuations can
give rise to rotating disturbances, or rotating instabilities, which
rotate through the rotor with a fraction of wheel speed [105,39].
Despite the presence of such ow unsteadiness, the compressor
can still operate in a stable mode. Rotating stall arises when the
loading is further increased, i.e., at a condition of lower mass ow
rate. Two routes to rotating stall have been identied: long length-
scale (modal) and short length-scale (spike) stall inception in axial
compressors [27]. Modal stall inception is generally characterized by
the relatively slow growth (over 1040 rotor revolutions) of a small
disturbance of circumferential wavelength into a fully developed
stall cell. Spike stall inception starts with the appearance of a large
amplitude short length-scale (two to three rotor blade passages)
disturbance at the rotor tip, the so-called spike, which grows into a
fully developed rotating stall cell within few rotor revolutions.
Recently, it has been observed that the stalling ow can rst take
the form of a rotating modal disturbance which then changes into
one or more spikes (Fig. 8). In that case, the spike seems to grow out
of the long length-scale disturbance.
A mechanism to explain short length-scale rotating stall
inception in axial compressors has been recently proposed [90].
Based on the proposed mechanism, the two criteria for spike stall
inception are the lining-up of the trajectory interface between the
incoming and tip clearance ow with the blade tip leading edge
plane, and the onset of negative pitch-averaged axial velocity at
the blade tip trailing edge. This nds conrmation in a previous
numerical work [38]. Recent experimental tests support the
hypothesis that stall initiates when the interface between
Fig. 4. Perspective views of shock in a transonic rotor, for each ow rate each of
the three views is rotated by 201 [103].
Fig. 5. Measured blade-to-blade relative Mach number in a transonic compressor
rotor [83].
Fig. 6. Blade suction side boundary layer radial uid ow [10].
approaching and reversed uid reaches the leading edge plane
at the blade tip [6]. Other researches showed tip clearance
ow spillage into the adjacent blade passage from the pressure
side of the leading edge leading to stall inception [42,104], as well
as tip leakage vortex trajectory movement reaching the leading
edge of the adjacent blade as the compressor is throttled near the
stall [9].
The following paragraphs give a summary of the possible
techniques for limiting the negative impacts of the above
reported compressor ow features in aircraft gas turbine engines.
Paragraphs from 3 to 6 deal with more recent investigated and in
some cases even adopted solutions. Paragraph 7 gives a look at
future prospects in advanced solutions.
2. Blade proles studies
For relative inlet Mach numbers in the order of 1.3 and higher
the most important design intent is to reduce the Mach number in
front of the passage shock. This is of primary importance due to
the strongly rising pressure losses with increasing pre-shock
Mach number, and because of the increasing pressure losses
due to the shock/boundary layer interaction or shock-induced
separation. The reduction of the pre-shock Mach number can be
achieved by zero or even negative curvature in the front part of
the blade suction side and by a resulting pre-compression shock
system reducing the Mach number upstream of the nal strong
passage shock. The thickness is also kept very low, about 2% of
chord for the tip section of a transonic fan.
Besides inducing energy losses, the presence of shock waves
makes transonic compressors particularly sensitive to variations
in blade section design. An investigation of cascade throat area,
internal contraction, and trailing edge effective camber on com-
pressor performance showed that small changes in meanline
angles, and consequently in the airfoil shape and passage area
ratios, signicantly affect the performance of transonic blade
rows [93].
One of the most important airfoil design parameter affecting
the aerodynamics of transonic bladings is the chordwise location
of maximum thickness. An experimental and numerical evalua-
tion of two versions of a low aspect ratio transonic rotor having
the location of the tip blade section maximum thickness at 55%
and 40% chord length, respectively, showed that the more aft
position of maximum thickness is preferred for the best high
speed performance, keeping the edge and maximum thickness
values the same [94]. The better performance was associated with
the lower shock front losses with the ner section that results
when the location of the maximum thickness is moved aft. The
existence of an optimum maximum thickness location in the
range from 55% to 60% chord length for such rotor was hypothe-
sized. Similar results can be found in a recent work [21] describ-
ing an optimization methodology for the aerodynamic design of
turbomachinery applied to a transonic compressor bladings and
showing how the thermal loss coefcient decreases with increas-
ing the maximum thickness location for all the sections from hub
to tip.
Fig. 7. Tip clearance ow [10].
Fig. 8. Time history of static pressure variation at eight locations around the
annulus at 44% chord ahead of the rotor of a transonic compressor stage, in
percentage of rotor speed the speed of the disturbance (modied from [19]).
Not only the position of maximum thickness but also the
airfoil thickness has been showed to have a signicant impact on
the aerodynamic behavior of transonic compressor rotors, as
observed in an investigation on surface roughness and airfoil
thickness effects [85]. In this work, a 0.025 mm thick smooth
coating was applied to the pressure and suction surface of the
rotor blades, increasing the leading edge thickness by 10% at the
hub and 20% at the tip. The smooth coating surface nish was
comparable to the bare metal blade surface nish; therefore the
coating did not increase roughness over the blade, except at the
leading edge where roughness increased due to particle impact
damage. It resulted in a 4% loss in pressure ratio across the rotor
at an operating point near design mass ow, with the largest
degradation in pressure rise over the outer half of the blade span.
When assessed at a constant pressure ratio, the adiabatic ef-
ciency degradation at design speed was in the order of 36 points.
The recent development of optimization tools coupled with
accurate CFD codes has improved the turbomachinery design
process signicantly, making it faster and more efcient. The
application to blade section design, with a quasi three-dimen-
sional and more recently with a fully three-dimensional
approach, can lead to optimal blade geometries in terms of
aerodynamic performance at both design and off-design operat-
ing conditions. This is particularly true in the eld of transonic
compressors, where performance is highly sensitive to little
changes in airfoil design.
Fig. 9 shows the blade prole deformation obtained in a quasi
3-D numerical optimization process of a transonic compressor
blade section along with the relative Mach number contours
before and after the optimization [15]. As shown, no modica-
tions of the inlet ow eld occurred after the optimization, but
the ow eld structure in the passage is clearly different. The
negative curvature of the section upstream of the shock led to the
reduction of the upstream relative Mach number from 1.4 to 1.2.
Instead of creating a normal shock, the new shape created two
low intensity shocks. The new prole gave an efciency incre-
ment of 1.75 points at design condition, without changing the
choking mass ow. A large part of the efciency improvement at
the design condition remained at off-design conditions.
Fig. 10 is related to a both aerodynamic and structural
optimization of the well-known transonic compressor rotor 67
[81], where the aerodynamic objective aimed at maximizing the
total pressure ratio whereas the structural objective was to
minimize the blade weight, with the constraint that the new
design had comparable mass ow rate as the baseline design [59].
The optimization was carried out at the design operating point.
Geometric modications regarded the mean camber line (with the
leading and trailing edge points xed) and the thickness distribution
of four airfoil proles (hub, 31% span, 62% span, and tip), linearly
interpolated to obtained the new 3-D blade. The chord distribution
along the span and the meridional contours of hub, casing, sweep,
and lean were maintained.
At 10% and 50% span (not shown here), the optimization gave a
larger camber but lower thickness than the baseline design. The
thinner airfoils contributed to reduce the weight of the new
design. The calculated difference in the pressure distribution was
rather small. At 90% span (see Fig. 10), the new design had a
slightly smaller camber and thinner airfoil than the baseline.
Nevertheless, the calculated pressure difference was rather large,
indicating again that transonic ows are highly sensitive to the
prole shape change. One noticeable impact was also in the shock
position. The new design showed a more forward passage shock
than the baseline.
Such optimized blade gave a decrease of 5.4% in weight and an
improvement of 1.8% in the total pressure ratio. The lighter
weight came from a thinner blade shape. The higher total
Fig. 9. Blade prole deformation (left) and relative Mach number contours (right) before and after the optimization [15].
pressure ratio was mainly attributed to a reduced separation zone
after the shock at the outer span. In Fig. 10, the separation zones
are characterized by streamlines going towards the separation
lines, whereas reattachment lines look like ow is going away
from the separation lines. Compared with the baseline design,
downstream of the shock the new design gave a smaller separa-
tion zone, which was partially responsible for its higher total
pressure ratio.
The same rotor has been recently optimized at near choking
operating condition [97], i.e., at a normalized mass ow rate of
0.995. Fig. 11 shows the geometric modications made to the
blade sections along with the effects on the spanwise perfor-
mance proles at blade exit. In the hub region, the blade section
has increased camber, which is in line with the increased blade
loading near the hub. There is also a signicant geometry change
from the midspan to the tip region, where the tip section has been
changed from a multiple-circular-arc (MCA) type into a reverse-
cambered type of prole shape. At all, the new design increased
the blade isentropic efciency by 1.77%, with 0.15% increment in
the mass ow rate and 0.08% reduction in the pressure ratio.
Fig. 12 is again related to the redesign of rotor 67 using an
optimization tool based on evolutionary algorithms [67]. Note the
particular new design. The optimization gave rise to a double-
hump blade shape, especially obvious on the pressure side.
In such new design, the ow acceleration near the leading
edge at 33% span diminished because of the decrease of the
incidence angle. In addition, at 90% span, the shock on the suction
side moved aft and was weakened considerably because of the aft
movement of the maximum camber position. This new blade
showed an overall adiabatic efciency of 2% higher than the
baseline blade over the entire operating range for the design
speed.
Fig. 11. Blade sections (left) and spanwise distributions of efciency, total temperature ratio, and total pressure ratio at blade exit (right) [97].
Fig. 12. Comparison between the optimized and baseline design at 33% and 90% span [67].
Fig. 10. Blade section at 90% span (left) and streamlines close to the blade suction side (right) before and after the optimization (modied from [59]).
3. Three-dimensional shaped bladings
The preceding paragraph has shown that a certain maturity in
transonic compressors has been reached regarding the general
airfoil aerodesign. But the ow eld in a compressor is not only
inuenced by the two-dimensional airfoil geometry. The three-
dimensional shape of the blade is also of great importance,
especially in transonic compressor rotors where an optimization
of shock structure and its interference with secondary ows is
required. Many experimental and numerical works can be found
in the literature on the design and analysis of three-dimensional
shaped transonic bladings (e.g., [24,42,71]). Fig. 13 shows two
examples of non-conventional rotors (Rotor2 and Rotor3) derived
from the baseline Rotor1 which is conventionally radially-
stacked, all developed by TU Darmstadt and MTU Aero Engines.
As far as their performance is concerned, Rotor2 gave no real
improvement in efciency and total pressure ratio with respect to
the baseline conguration [13,53]. Rotor3, instead, gave higher
performance at design speed (1.5% peak efciency increment)
along with a signicantly wider operating range [68]. Information
on the favorable impact of Rotor3 blade design on internal
transonic ow eld is available in the open literature [8,54].
A numerical investigation on the aerodynamics of 3-D shaped
blades in transonic compressor rotors showed the possibility to
have better stall margin with forward sweep (upstream move-
ment of blade sections along the local chord direction, especially
at outer span region), maintaining a high efciency over a wider
range [28,30]. This seems to be a general point of view, as
conrmed by the following researches.
Numerical and experimental analyses carried out to evaluate
the performance of a conventional unswept rotor, a forward
swept rotor and an aft swept rotor showed that the forward
swept rotor had a higher peak efciency and a substantially larger
stall margin than the baseline unswept rotor, and that the aft
swept rotor had a similar peak efciency with a signicantly
smaller stall margin [41]. Detailed analyses of the measured
and calculated ow elds indicated that two mechanisms
were primarily responsible for the differences in aerodynamic
performance among these rotors. The rst mechanism was a
change in the radial shape of the passage shock near the casing by
the endwall effect, and the second was the radial migration of low
momentum uid to the blade tip region. Similar results were
obtained in a parallel investigation which identied the reduced
shock/boundary layer interaction, resulting from reduced axial
ow diffusion and less accumulation of centrifuged blade surface
boundary layer at the tip, as the prime contributor to the
enhanced performance with forward sweep [96].
A specic 3-D blade curvature can have a great inuence on
internal ow features and signicantly affect the local aerody-
namic behavior of the rotor, even if the induced overall perfor-
mance can be minimal due to compensation effects. This means
that the local impact can be positive somewhere and negative
elsewhere. Therefore, a proper combination of different 3-D blade
curvatures could lead to optimal designs. An example is given in
Fig. 14 which shows an S-shaped transonic compressor rotor, i.e.,
forward swept at the tip region and backward swept at the hub to
mean region [51]. It combined the blade curvature of a forward
swept solution which shifted the shock position towards down-
stream at the tip, improving its ow matching at leading edge and
providing the minimum shock losses, with the blade curvature of
an aft swept solution which showed negative effect at the tip
region but in hub to mean region improved efciency due to the
correction of the ow matching at the leading edge. As shown in
Fig. 14, compared to the conventional design, the new concept
rotor provided higher efciency at higher design pressure ratio.
The structural viewpoint is an important issue to be consid-
ered in such a solution. The S-shape curvature adopted in the
above cited work provided the possibility for realistic structural
design. No severe problems with the blade structural integrity
were found thanks to a centroidal line close to the original one.
Instead, structural problems related to stress concentrations in
the blade prevented the real design of the forward swept rotor,
even though the forward swept rotor was considered from the
numerical study to give a noticeable performance improvement.
A recent numerical work gave another point of view on the
impact of blade curvature in transonic compressor rotors,
Fig. 13. Transonic compressor test rotorsTU Darmstadt and MTU aero engines [53,68].
Fig. 15. Blade axial curvature impact on shock, suction side boundary layer and blade wake development [11].
Fig. 14. S-shaped transonic compressor rotor and performance comparison with baseline radially-stacked conguration [51].
showing how the movement of blade sections in the axial and
tangential directions can inuence the internal ow eld [3,11].
Such work showed that the axial blade curvature can help to
inuence the shock shape in the meridional plane, inducing the
shock to assume the meridional curvature of the blade leading
edge (Fig. 15). In addition, a considerable impact on the radial
outward migration of uid particles which takes place inside the
blade suction side boundary layer after the interaction with the
shock has been conrmed. The code predicted a reduction of the
strength of such ow feature when the blade is curved down-
stream and an increment when the blade is curved upstream.
Such ow phenomenon is harmful because obstructs the bound-
ary layer development in the streamwise direction, leading to a
thickening of blade wakes. A reduction of its strength helps to
reduce the entropy generation and the aerodynamic losses
associated with the blade wake development. The possibility to
increase the peak efciency of 0.8% at design speed using a proper
downstream blade curvature has been showed for the high loaded
transonic compressor rotor 37 [73].
The same research group investigated the aerodynamic effects
induced by several tangential blade curvatures on the same rotor.
It was observed that when the curvature is applied towards the
direction of rotor rotation, the blade-to-blade shock tends to
move more downstream, becoming more oblique to the incoming
ow. This reduced the aerodynamic shock losses and entropy
generation, showing in some cases a peak efciency increment of
over 1% at design speed [4]. Similar results were previously
obtained using a numerical optimization algorithm [1]. Fig. 16
shows the predicted impact of the optimized design of rotor 37 on
the blade-to-blade Mach number.
Higher performance can be achieved using a proper combination
of two orthogonal blade curvatures, i.e., the use of a blade curved both
axially and tangentially, as well as swept and leaned at the same
time. Peak efciency increments from 1% to 1.5% were numerically
observed using a blade prevalently curved towards the direction of
rotor rotation and slightly backward inclined [12,52,107].
4. Casing treatments
Hollow structures in the casing to improve the tip endwall
ow eld of axial ow compressors are commonly referred to as
casing treatments. Fig. 17 shows some examples of casing treat-
ments investigated in the 1970s. Even if the early studies did not
reach a detailed understanding of the phenomenon, the ow
circulating in these cavities clearly showed to have a positive
impact on rotor stability. In the past fteen years, the progress in
measurement techniques and computational methods made it
possible to investigate more in-depth a larger number of casing
treatment solutions and their effects on different compressors.
Many researches were carried out on transonic compressor rotors
and the potential of this kind of passive devices was revealed: a
proper treatment can not only widen the stable working range of
a transonic compressor rotor, but also improve its efciency.
4.1. Circumferential groove-type treatments
Recently, the inuence of circumferential grooves on the tip
ow eld of an axial single-stage transonic compressor has been
examined both experimentally and numerically (Fig. 18). The
compressor stage provided a strongly increased stall margin
(56.1%), with only small penalties in efciency when the casing
treatment was applied. Flow analyses showed that at near stall
conditions with the smooth casing, the induced vortex originating
from the tip clearance ow crossing the tip gap along 20%50%
chord length, hits the front part of the adjacent blade, indicating
the possibility of a spill forward of low momentum uid into the
next passage. With the casing treatment applied, the vortex
trajectory maintains alignment along the blades suction side,
thus preventing the onset of rotating stall.
Such a groove-type casing treatment has been also veried on
the rotor 37 in a recent CFD work conrming the positive impact
on the stall margin and giving insights on the action of grooves in
function of their position [49]. It was found that grooves at
Fig. 16. Baseline (left) and optimized (right) Mach number distributions at 90% span (modied from [1]).
leading edge to 10% axial chord almost have no effects on the stall
margin improvement, as they can hardly do any effective inu-
ence to the critical ow structures. Grooves at 15%40% chord can
inuence the leading edge blade tip leakage vortex trajectory
effectively. A proper design can give rise to the control of the
vortex breakdown. The grooves here also have an effect on
reducing the vortex-induced blockage region. Grooves at 45%
85% chord are found to have the ability to suppress the trailing
edge separation if it happens. Grooves close to the trailing edge
are also too far away from the critical structures in the passage
and are less effective on improving the stall margin.
Disadvantages of casing treatments like these are the space
they need and the weight increase of the compressor casing. So it
is a goal to maintain the positive effects (increased surge pressure
ratio in combination with high efciency) while at the same time
reducing the geometric volume of the device. On this regard, an
experimental and numerical investigation on the rst rotor of a
two-stage compressor showed that grooves with a much smaller
depth than conventional designs are similarly effective in increas-
ing the stall margin [72]. The same work also showed that two
shallow grooves placed near the leading edge are better than ve
deep or shallow grooves all over the blade tip. Fewer shallower
grooves clearly help to reduce the weight, fabrication costs, and
loss generation associated with such a casing treatment.
Other possible groove-type casing treatment solutions are
presented in Figs. 19 and 20. Fig. 19 shows a single extended
casing circumferential groove all over the blade tip section. It has
been numerically shown that such a casing treatment provides a
Fig. 18. Cross section of a transonic compressor stage with circumferential grooves (modied from [65]).
Fig. 17. Various casing treatments investigated in the 1970s [46].
means for uid to exit the ow path where the blade loading is
severe, migrate circumferentially, and re-enter the ow path at a
location where the pressure is more moderate. This can lead to
stability improvement since the ow relocation helps to relieve
the locally severe blade loading. Using this device, the authors
showed the possibility to improve both the efciency and the stall
margin.
Fig. 20 is related to a numerical investigation of casing
contouring effects on ow instability. While the Type B1
solution gave no improvements in stall margin, the Type C2
solution extended the calculated stable operating range from 94%
to about 92.5% normalized mass ow. With respect to the base-
line smooth casing conguration, the successful contouring
induced a smaller inow angle near the leading edge, i.e., a lower
incidence, delaying rotating stall inception.
4.2. Slot-type treatments
Another way to treat the casing with the aim to improve the
rotor performance and stability is presented in Fig. 21. Here the
casing wall is circumferentially treated with a discrete number of
axial rectangular slots over the blade tip section. It must be
mentioned that not only the aerodynamic performance can be
improved using such a solution. Also the unsteady mechanical
behavior of the blades working together with the casing treat-
ment is affected and could be reasonably improved.
A similar casing treatment concept has been investigated both
numerically and experimentally in a recent work [76,92]. In that
case, the casing treatment was designed to provide optimal
optical access in the immediate vicinity of the endwall, rather
than for maximum benets in terms of aerodynamic behavior.
Therefore, the performance improvements were negligible and
the stall margin extension limited, but a fundamental change in
the shock structure inside the rotor was revealed over the whole
operating range. Whereas the untreated casing showed the
typical leading edge bow shock from hub to tip, the casing
treatment case showed an additional second shock structure
terminating the expansion region in the front part of the blade
suction side. This shock developed from approximately 70% blade
height to the blade tip.
Another slot-type casing treatment has been numerically
studied in a previous work [102], consisting of four identical axial
slots per blade passage and having an open area of 50% in the
circumferential direction. The slots are parallel to the rotation
axis and inclined by 451 against the meridional plane in the
direction of rotor rotation. The slot shape is designed as a semi-
circle. Two congurations have been tested. In conguration 1,
the position of the slots is centered above the rotor blade tip
reaching from 7.5% to 92.5% chord length. In conguration 2, the
slots are moved upstream so that only 25% chord length remains
covered by the casing treatment.
For both congurations, simulations showed a signicant
increment in ow stability compared to the solid wall, the stalling
mass ow passed from 0.95% to 0.75% the design mass ow at the
design speed. It was observed that the stabilizing effects are based
on the positive impact of casing treatment on the tip clearance
ow and its resulting vortex. Conguration 1 led to a massive
Fig. 19. Single extended casing circumferential groove [2].
Fig. 20. Endwall casing contouring [50].
Fig. 21. EJ200 LPC with axial slots casing treatment (image from [14]).
destruction of the tip leakage vortex, whereas conguration 2
weakened the rolling-up of the tip clearance ow. Conguration 2,
gave also a positive impact on the overall efciency.
The inuence of slot-type casing treatment can be taken as an
unsteady excitation in the tip region, where the excitation
frequency is determined by the slot number. Experimental tests
were conducted in a transonic compressor to explore the effects
of the excitation frequency induced by an arc skewed slot casing
treatment ring (Fig. 22). It was veried that there is a strong
nonlinear functional relationship between the compressor aero-
dynamic behavior and the excitation frequency. It was also found
that the optimal excitation frequency for efciency and that for
the stall margin are different. However, the operating range can
be widely extended without penalty in the peak efciency if the
unsteady interaction between the casing treatment and rotor is
reasonably applied. Applying a proper excitation frequency, the
peak efciency, stall margin, and maximum mass ow were
increased of 0.17%, 19.86%, and 0.81%, respectively, at near design
rotating speed and of 1.13%, 57.84%, and 1.57%, respectively, at
part design speed.
5. Air injection excitation and bleeding
One ow control idea to receive a considerable attention in gas
turbine applications is the ow injection and bleeding concept.
Air injection near the blade tips has proved to increase compres-
sor stall margin, leading to higher engine operability. Fig. 23
shows a set of successful 12 non-intrusive prototype injectors
recently installed in the casing of a transonic compressor test
rotor. On the other hand, aspiration (or bleeding) can be used to
delay blade separation, which limits the stage work and therefore
increases the required number of stages. Doubling the work per
stage using aspiration results in a dramatic reduction in the
number of stages. For ghter applications this technology looks
very attractive due to its potential to improve the thrust/weight
ratio of the engine.
5.1. Air injection
Measurements and simulations for active discrete tip injection
have been presented for a range of steady injection rates and
distributions of injectors around the annulus of a tip-critical
transonic compressor rotor operating in isolation [86]. In such
case, casing-mounted injectors were located at 200% tip axial
chord upstream of the rotor. Each injector penetrated 6% span
from the casing into the ow eld. The simulations indicated that
tip injection increases stability by unloading the rotor tip.
Tip injection decreases incidence and blade loading at the tip,
allowing increased loading at lower blade spans before the blade
stalls. With tip injection present, the blade stalls when the loading
at the tip reaches the level equal to that for which the blade stalls
with no injection. The experiments show that stability enhance-
ment is related to the mass averaged axial velocity at the tip. For
the tested rotor, experimental results demonstrated that at 70%
speed the stalling ow coefcient can be reduced by 30% using an
injected mass ow equivalent to 1% of the annulus ow. At design
speed, the stalling ow coefcient was reduced by 6% using an
injected mass ow equivalent to 2% of the annulus ow. Tip
injection has also been demonstrated as an effective tool for
recovering a compressor from fully developed stall.
In a self-induced (passive) solution, steady discrete tip injec-
tion using casing recirculation has been simulated in a single
transonic fan rotor [45]. The idea was to bleed pressurized uid
from downstream of the rotor and properly inject it upstream.
Simulations were carried out assuming both a clear and distorted
inlet ow. The distortion was circumferentially applied near the
casing endwall xing a lower inlet total pressure. The recircula-
tion model gave 125% range extension without inlet distortion
and 225% range extension with inlet distortion, without signi-
cant impact on overall efciency.
Such a solution has been successively tested on a single-stage
transonic compressor [82]. Results clearly indicated that recircula-
tion extends the stable operating range of that stage to lower mass
ows than that can be achieved without recirculation. With the
recirculation activated, the positive change in stalling ow coef-
cient was 6% at 70% of design speed and 2% at design speed, with a
total injected ow of 0.9% of the annulus ow at both operating
speeds. In the same work, the potential for using endwall recircula-
tion to increase the stability of transonic highly loaded multistage
compressors was demonstrated through results from a rig test of
simulated recirculation driving both a steady injected ow and an
unsteady injected ow. Unsteady injection increased stability more
than steady injection and was capable of changing the unsteady
near stall dynamics of the multistage compressor.
Details on the way tip injection impacts on the aerodynamics
of a transonic compressor rotor have been reported in a recent
numerical investigation [20]. A discrete steady tip injection
concept has been modeled on a transonic stage and the near stall
aerodynamic behavior simulated with and without injection.
Simulations demonstrated the ability to calculate ow instabil-
ities and their subsequent growth into a fully developed rotating
spike disturbance. With tip injection present, as the compressor
was throttled beyond the non-injection stall point, the lower
spans began to exceed their loading capability (high angle of
attack and diffusion factor) resulting in local suction surface
Fig. 23. Discrete tip injection [46].
Fig. 22. Arc skewed slot casing treatment ring [89].
reverse ow pockets that centrifuged out to the rotor tip. In the
stable (sufcient injection) case, the disturbance cells would be
washed away by the injectors. Some disturbance cells were swept
downstream after passing through only one injector while others
passed through multiple injectors before being swept down-
stream. In the unstable (insufcient injection) case, the migration
of the disturbance cells from lower spans to the tip region caused
a build-up of reverse ow, due to the inability of the tip injection
to offset the production of disturbance cells at this unstable ow
point, to the point that the entire circumferential breadth of the
passage would be within a disturbance cell. When this occurred,
the disturbance cell would begin to spill into the adjacent
passage. This would increase the overall size of the disturbance
cell in both the axial and spanwise directions. The disturbance cell
would then continue this migration around the annulus, absorb-
ing the disturbance cells in the other blade passages as it traveled.
This migration was reected in a slowdown in the speed at which
the disturbance traveled around the rotor as observed in the
absolute frame of reference.
5.2. Bleeding
Fig. 24 shows the sketch of a transonic aspirated stage
experimentally tested and numerically investigated to demon-
strate the application of boundary layer aspiration for increasing
stage work [77]. The stage was designed to produce a pressure
ratio of 1.6 at a tip speed of 750 ft/s resulting in a stage work
coefcient of 0.88. The primary aspiration requirement for the
stage was a bleed fraction 0.5% of the inlet mass ow on the rotor
and stator suction surfaces. Additional aspiration totaling 2.8%
was also used at shock impingement locations and other locations
on the hub and casing walls. The stage achieved a peak pressure
ratio of 1.58 and through ow efciency of 90% at the design
point. The rotor showed an extremely high efciency of 97% for a
transonic rotor, partially attributed to aspiration and partially to
the elimination of the tip clearance ow due to the tip shroud.
Aspiration was also effective in maintaining stage performance at
off-design conditions. The experimental data showed unstalled
stage performance at least 83% of the design mass ow.
The possibility of a very high pressure ratio per single-stage
using aspiration has been demonstrated for the fan of Fig. 25. The
fan stage has been designed to achieve a pressure ratio of 3.4 at
1500 ft/s. The low energy viscous ow was aspirated from
diffusion-limiting locations on the blades and ow path surfaces.
Experimental results gave a stage pressure ratio exceeding 3 at
design speed, with an aspiration ow fraction of 3.5% of the stage
inlet mass ow. CFD simulations showed that aspiration xes the
passage shock position, particularly in the tip region, maintaining
good aerodynamic behavior at off-design operating points.
In a previous work [26], it was demonstrated the possibility to
reduce the amount of aspiration without compromise its benets.
When used as an add-on to an existing design, aspiration can require
excessive amounts of suction, whereas with a blade/aspiration
scheme coupled design a signicantly lower amount of suction can
be needed. A baseline supersonic rotor with 56 blades was used in
that work as the starting point. The blade count in that rotor was then
reduced to 42 blades, and it was found that 2% of ow suction was
needed to pull the shock back into the blade passage for the required
back pressure. The aspiration zone was located approximately behind
the shock on the suction surface from hub to 95% span. With 42
blades, inspection of the ow eld showed that the peak Mach
number and loading were signicantly higher than in the baseline
blade case, resulting in increased shock losses, thickening of the blade
suction surface boundary layer, and a large region of low momentum
uid in the tip clearance region.
A new pressure loading shape was developed to mitigate the
situation. The new design was shown to have better efciency
potential and a cleaner casing endwall ow using only 0.3% ow
suction. It was also shown that the constant speed throttling
characteristic of the new design can be tailored by using varying
amounts of suction (up to 2%) to hold the passage shock
stationary thereby making it possible to satisfy multiple operating
conditions with minimal aerodynamic penalty.
6. Future prospects
On the basis of the technical ndings during the last years and
with the help of advanced CFD tools, new solutions for transonic
Fig. 25. Test package (left) and rotor aspiration scheme (right) [61].
Fig. 24. A tested suction conguration [78].
compressor performance enhancement are currently under inves-
tigation. Following paragraphs present advanced concepts which
could be realized in the next future.
6.1. Zero net mass ux active ow controls
Flow control devices involving zero net mass ux oscillatory
jets are known as synthetic jets. They have shown good
feasibility for industrial applications and effectiveness in control-
ling ow separation in external aerodynamics (e.g., [23,34,
37,48,74]). Synthetic jets, with the characteristic of zero net mass
ux and non-zero momentum ux, do not require a complex
system of pumps and pipes. They could be very efcient because
at the suction part of the cycle the low momentum uid is sucked
into the device, whereas in the blowing part a high momentum jet
accelerates it.
However, very few works have been published on the use of
such devices for controlling the separation in compressor blades.
Recently, synthetic vortex generator jets have been successfully
demonstrated for the active separation control on subsonic axial
ow compressor blades [108], for which a signicant reduction in
the loss coefcients has been obtained (even if the results are
considered by the authors as preliminary). The experiments were
performed in a high speed plane cascade wind tunnel (up to Mach
0.7) by using a typical blade root shape under high loading
conditions.
In another work, the results of an experimental campaign
conducted on a stationary annular cascade wind tunnel demon-
strated that unsteady ow control using synthetic jets could
effectively reduce ow separation in a subsonic stationary com-
pressor cascade [109].
To the authors knowledge, the use of synthetic jets has never
been experimentally demonstrated in transonic compressor
rotors, where the ow eld is much more complicated than in
conventional compressor blades, due to the stronger adverse
pressure gradients and the presence of shocks which interact
with the boundary layer. In these rotors, the use of synthetic jets
could be helpful (i) to reduce the thickness and instability of blade
suction side boundary layer after the interaction with the shock,
and (ii) to delay the development of the low momentum region
which can take place from the shock/tip leakage vortex interac-
tion at low ow operating conditions, a ow feature which is
considered harmful to rotor stability.
Fig. 26. Concept of plasma ow actuation for suppression of spike stall inception [91].
Fig. 27. Comparison of conventional blade and tandem blade [75].
Fig. 28. A highly loaded fan on the left [44] and a transonic compressor rotor on the right [75] with tandem blades.
That has been partially corroborate making use of a 3D CFD model
developed using a commercial URANS package [5]. A rake of synthetic
jets positioned into a thin radial slot on the blade suction surface has
been simulated and the obtained results, although still preliminary,
demonstrated the jet effectiveness for the active control of boundary
layer in transonic compressors. Compared to the baselines, the blade
with jets showed an increased performance at near stall operating
condition, with an efciency increment up to 1.4%. The more
favorable aerodynamic behavior has been associated with a less
detrimental ow eld near the casing, which could also lead to
higher rotor stability and, therefore, to a wider stall margin.
Different from synthetic jets in the concept but similar in
adding momentum without adding mass ow is the so called
plasma actuation. A computational assessment of the use of
single dielectric barrier discharge (SDBD) plasma actuators for the
suppression of short length scale stall inception in a transonic
axial compressor has been recently presented [91]. As shown in
Fig. 26, a SDBD plasma actuator consists of two offset thin
electrodes, one of which is exposed to the air, and the other
encapsulated in a dielectric material. When an AC voltage of
several kilovolts at several kilohertz is applied, weakly ionized
gases (plasma) are cyclically generated over the encapsulated
electrode. In the presence of the electric eld around the electro-
des, the plasma induces a thin jet adjacent to the surface.
Such work showed that the casing plasma actuator should be
positioned near the rotor leading edge so as to optimize the
impact on the interface between the incoming and tip clearance
ows (suppressing ow spillage below the leading edge), as well
as for practical consideration. Simulations also indicated that the
required actuator strength is higher than that of typical SDBD
actuators while still remaining within practical achievable limits.
6.2. Tandem rotor bladings
Fig. 27 shows the basic idea as well as the potential perfor-
mance of tandem bladings. The two mechanisms of ow decel-
eration are split up and distributed to two different blade rows.
The rst blade row produces the pressure rise exclusively by a
shock. The necessary turning behind the shock, which is proble-
matical in standard transonic rotors, is then done in the second
row with fresh boundary layers. With the same blade speed, a
tandem blade can give more pressure ratio than a standard
solution, with a considerable reduction of length and weight of
the whole multistage compressor.
Fig. 28 shows two examples of transonic rotors with tandem
bladings tested in the last decade. The left one delivered 7.03 kg/s
corrected air ow providing a total pressure ratio of 2.34 at design
working condition (corrected speed 29,700 rpm), with an adiabatic
efciency of 88%. The right one was designed to give 2.22 total
pressure ratio for a corrected ow rate of 5.49 kg/s at 29,134 rpm
(rotor inlet radius 133.6 mm), with 85.2% adiabatic efciency.
6.3. Counter-rotating rotors
The work done by a rotor is related to the change in swirl
across the blade and the rotational velocity of the blades.
Fig. 29. Velocity triangles in the frame of reference of the rst rotor and aspiration passage geometry in the second rotor [55].
Fig. 30. Predicted (solid lines) and measured (points) performance [55]).
Counter-rotation provides for the largest change in swirl across a
series of rotors, facilitating the largest pressure ratio. Recently, the
design and test of a two-stage, vaneless, aspirated counter-
rotating fan has been successfully carried out by MIT [55].
Figs. 29 and 30 come from that work. The fan nominal design
objectives were a pressure ratio of 3 and an adiabatic efciency of
87%. A pressure ratio of 2.9 at 89% efciency was measured at the
design speed. The conguration consisted of a counter-swirl-
producing inlet guide vane, followed by a high tip speed
1450 ft/s non-aspirated rotor and a counter-rotating low speed
1150 ft/s aspirated rotor. The lower tip speed and lower solidity of
the second rotor resulted in a blade loading above conventional
limits, but enabled a balance between the shock loss and viscous
boundary layer loss, the latter of which was controlled by
aspiration. The internal ow physics of this fan have been
numerically investigated in a parallel work [56].
That design also showed considerable ow range and stall
margin. This could be due to stability arguments made related to
the slope of the pressure rise characteristic where the steeper
characteristic tends to damp out ow non-uniformities [25].
It was argued that a counter-rotating design will have a char-
acteristic slope that is at least 50% steeper than a conventional
two-stage design. Another possibility is based on the simple
explanation of rotating stall. The stall cell or disturbance runs in
a direction that incidence is increased [25]. In a conventional two-
stage design, both rotors are traveling in the same direction so the
disturbance rotates in the same sense as the rotors. For the
counter-rotating design, the rotors are traveling in different
directions. Therefore a disturbance is less likely to travel and
disrupt the ow in the entire annulus.
7. Conclusions
Transonic compressors are the state-of-art in the compression
system of todays civil and military aero engines. Their capability
to provide high pressure ratios maintaining high efciencies
made them preferable to both subsonic (lower pressure ratio)
and supersonic (lower efciency) solutions.
The researches of last decades have greatly contributed to
their success. The progress made in optical measurement techni-
ques and the development of computational methods led to a
deep understanding of the loss mechanisms associated with their
inherent supersonic relative ow, making possible signicant
aerodynamic improvements and industrial diffusion.
Nowadays there is still space for further improvements and
new solutions will be developed in the next future, like highly
effective stall/surge control systems and higher pressure ratio
congurations, or even new concepts based on new advanced
working principles.
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Recent advances in transonic axial compressor aerodynamics

Roberto Biollo, Ernesto Benini

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