Influence of Tip Clearance on the Performance and Matching of Multistage Axial Compressors

Tip clearance has great influence on the performance of multistage axial compressors including efficiency, pressure rise, mass flow, as well as matching. This paper reports a study into the influence of tip clearance on the performance and matching of a 5-stage axial compressor by a numerical method. Different tip clearances from 0% to 5.0% span which represents the typical range of tip clearance in modern multistage axial compressors were simulated and analyzed. The results show that as tip clearance increases from 0% to 5.0% span, the choked mass flow decreases by about 21.8%, the peak pressure ratio decreases by about 43.1% and the peak efficiency decreases about 14.3 percents. As tip clearance increases, the efficiency of the whole compressor decreases in a parabolic manner not linearly as previous suggested, which is partially attributable to the cantilevered stators considered in this paper and primarily due to the mismatching of different stages. It is of great importance to control the tip clearance. When tip clearance increases, the front stage tends to work near surge condition and the rear stage tends to work near choke condition, which leads to lower efficiency than in the middle stages. A weight was defined to evaluate each stage’s contribution to the whole compressor’s efficiency deficit caused by the increase of tip clearance. Front and rear stages contribute more to the efficiency deficit than the middle stages, which indicates that more attention should be paid on front and rear stages to improve the performance of multistage axial compressors. In order to evaluate the matching of multistage axial compressors with a quantified method, a new parameter named “Peak Efficiency Deviation (PED)” was defined based on the difference between each stage’s operating efficiency and its peak efficiency. The mass flow of multistage axial compressors should be well considered to make the PED parameter to be close to zero as possible. In the most commonly used range of tip clearance from 0.5% to 3.0% span, the PED varies little within 0.4 percent, which is only about 8.4% of the peak efficiency deficit at 1.5% span tip clearance. So, the PED could be small within a wide range of tip clearances if the matching of the compressor is perfect at design tip clearance.