Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, VoL 33, No.

1, 1997

COMPRESSORS, PUMPS, REFRIGERATION

CAUSE O F S U R G I N G I N A X I A L T U R B O C O M P R E S S O R S
V. Yu. Rubinov

UDC 621.615:532.517.6.001.5

Surging in turbocompressors, which is characteristic of pressure and discharge pulsations, substantially complicates the operation of those machines and reduces their reliability. What causes this can be determined only on the basis of a more detailed analysis of the distinctive features of the hydraulic operation of impeller blading. The blading of a turbocompressor generates lift that moves gas into a zone of higher pressure. While the angular force of the impeller is tangential to the direction of rotation, the lift force of the axial blading is directed along the impeller axis, i.e., is perpendicular to the plane of rotation. Impeller bladings can be designed rationally, therefore, only by taking into account the distinctive features of the mechanism by which circumferential angular forces are transformed into lift in the blading. Analysis of the interaction of the flow with a single profile is the basis for understanding the hydrodynamic process in bladings. For example, the lift of an airplane wing arises, as shown in [1], because the magnitude and direction of a considerable part of the drag force, which is overcome by the engine thrust, are transformed. The principle of transforming the drag forces into a lift force can be grasped easily from Fig. la, which shows a wedge system of bodies, consisting of a support plane A, a wedge B, and a load C of mass G, which moves in the direction D. The equilibrium of the given system in the absence of friction is determined from the condition that the forces F~ and F2 do equal work, i.e.,

A~

A 2

F~Ax F2Ay.
=

Since Ay = Ax tan % we have F2 = F J t a n ~. The external active force FI does work on lifting the load; the wedge transforms F1 as to magnitude and direction into the lifting force F2. The work A2 is the same work A~, but transformed as to direction; A~ and A2, therefore, cannot be added together. The same principle of transformation of forces also holds for the interaction of a single profile with the liquid in which it moves at an angle of attack aa to the direction of motion (see Fig. lb). The flow comes at an angle to the surface of the body and lower-lying layers of liquid have an inertial resistance to the "intrusion" of liquid from region B and as a result the relative motion of the liquid in that region is retarded. A counterflow coming up against the region of retarded liquid causes a pressure rise and creates drag. The dynamic action of the oncoming flow on the front face of the liquid wedge B is supplemented by the viscous action on the underside of that wedge by lower-lying "fast" layers, which thus participate in the creation of drag on the motion of the profile. Through the liquid wedge B, which rests on the lower-lying layers of liquid, the force Fa~, which is the horizontal part of the total drag force, is transformed into the vertical lifting force Fa. The wedge relation F~I = Fat~tan ~ implies that the maximum ratio F J F a, in other words the optimum relation between the lifting force Ft and the drag force Fd when the profile and"the oncoming flow interact by the wedge principle, is attained at small profile angles of attack. The results of the interaction of a single profile with the oncoming flow are not limited to the appearance of a lifting force from the underside (windward side) of the profile. By the same wedge principle a lifting force is also produced on the upper (lee) side of the profile. Unlike the windward side, where the inertial forces of the oncoming flow under the conditions of slowing create a backwater beneath the profile, on the lee side (above the profile), where the slip flow under the conditions of diffuser flow is also forced to slow down (see the velocity curves w in Fig. lb), the drag F,, due to its inertial force is transformed into a lifting (suction) force F,, by the liquid wedge C. Translated from Khimicheskoe i Neftyannoe Mashinostroenie, No. 1, pp. 43-47, January-February, 1997. 0009-2355/97/3301-0059518.00 9 Plenum Publishing Corporation 59