Numerical Investigation of Low Solidity Vaned Diffuser Performance in a High-Pressure Centrifugal Compressor: Part II—Influence of Vane Stagger

Abstract

As the second part, following the authors’ previous study, the influence of the LSD (Low Solidity Diffuser) vane stagger on high-pressure ratio centrifugal compressor performance is numerically investigated with all the other design parameters fixed, while vane solidities are in the range from 0.70 to 0.85. Vane stagger is varied for 6 cases from 8.55 deg to 22.37 deg with the NACA65-(4A10)06 airfoil profile, and the Stage interface scheme is applied for an interaction treatment. As the vane stagger increases, changing from 10.55 deg to 19.58 deg, the compressor overall performance is generally improved, but two extreme cases of vane stagger of 8.55 deg and 22.37 deg provide poor performance. Vane stagger of 19.58 deg shows the highest efficiency and pressure rise near design flow, while vane stagger of 13.76 deg has the largest operating range with acceptable performance of efficiency and pressure ratio.