Numerical Investigation into the Transient Behavior of the Spike-Type Rotating Stall for a Transonic Compressor Rotor

In this paper, a numerical investigation into a spike-type rotating stall process is carried out considering a transonic compressor rotor (the NASA Rotor 37). Through solution of the Unsteady Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (URANS) equations, the evolution process from an initially circumferentially-symmetric near-stall flow field to a stable stall condition is simulated without adding any artificial disturbance. At the near-stall operating point, periodic fluctuations are present in the overall flow of the rotor. Moreover, the blockage region in the channel periodically shifts from middle span to the tip. This fluctuating condition does not directly lead to stall, while the full-annulus calculation eventually evolves to stall. Interestingly, a kind of “early disturbance” feature appears in the dynamic signals, which propagates forward ahead of the rotor.