Large-scale Simulation of Unsteady Flows in 13-stage Multi-spool Compressor

Abstract Although significant advances have been made in full-annulus simulation of flow in single-spool compressors. However, no work has been devoted to full-annulus simulation of flow in multi-spool compressors. The aim of the paper is to develop techniques for full-annulus simulation of unsteady flows in multi-spool compressor. The techniques for automatic generation of large-scale full-annulus grid of multi-spool compressor, for uniting simulation in LPC(Low Pressure Compressor) and HPC(High Pressure Compressor) in one solver, for processing LPC/HPC interface in multi-spool compressor in parallel environment, for managing vast amounts of flow field data in multi-spool compressor with low space complexity are proposed. Based on an in-house software ASPAC, these techniques are then applied to full-annulus unsteady simulation of flow in a 13-stage multi-spool compressor with 800 million grid cells using 10240 processes. The numerical simulation results are validated through compared with results of empirical model. Meanwhile, it indicates that results of large-scale unsteady simulation are more precise than results of steady simulation.