Paper-Conference

A large-eddy simulation of the open ECL5/CATANA transonic fan stage uncovers a low-frequency “wandering” motion of the tip-leakage vortex. A dedicated kinetic vortex-tracking algorithm is developed to follow the vortex trajectory and characterise this unsteady behaviour.

In this paper, a low-fidelity 3D method for predicting the flow around shrouded rotors is presented, aiming at early design investigation with minimal cost. Using the vortex lattice method and considering compressibility effects, the approach simulates different tip gap sizes and provides efficient real-time calculations. Applied to a shrouded fan, the effects of the tip gap size are evaluated.