Numerical study on the range enhancement of a centrifugal compressor with a ring groove system

Abstract

This paper presents a numerical study of casing treatments on a centrifugal compressor in order to improve stability and the surge margin. High efficiency, a high pressure ratio, and a wide operating range are required for a high-performance centrifugal compressor. A ring groove casing treatment is effective for flow range enhancement in centrifugal compressors. In the present study, compressor performance was analyzed according to the ring groove location and the results were compared with the case without a ring groove. The effect of guide vanes in the ring groove was also investigated. Four more variants of grooves were modeled and simulated using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) in order to optimize the groove location. The numerical analysis was carried out using a commercial code ANSYS-CFX program. The simulation results showed that the ring groove increased the operating range of the compressor. The ring groove with guide vanes improved both the compressor's performance at low flow rates and improved the compressor's surge margin. Copyright © 2011 by ASME.