Experimental Study on the Effect of Tip Clearance of a Centrifugal Compressor

팁 간극 영향으로 인한 원심 압축기 성능특성 시험연구

The experimental study on the effect of axial clearance between the tip of impeller blades and stationary shroud has been performed. The investigated compressor, which is a part of a small auxiliary power unit engine, consists of a curved inlet, a centrifugal impeller, a channel diffuser and a plenum chamber. It was designed for a total pressure ratio of 4.3 and an efficiency of $77\%$ at design speed of 60,000 rpm. The experiments are carried out in an open-loop centrifugal compressor test rig driven by a turbine. For the four different clearance ratios Cr(clearance/impeller tip width) of 6.25, 10.93, 15.60 and 20.30 percent, the overall performance data are obtained at $97\%,\;90\%$ and $80\%$ of the design speed. The results show the overall pressure ratio decrease of $7.7\%$ and the efficiency loss of $8.7\%$ across the variation of clearance ratio near the design speed. It also indicates that the influence of tip clearance became weaker as the flow rate is reduced and the stable operating range is not significantly influenced by the change of clearance ratio.