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Assessment of 1-D Solver for Performance Evaluation of Centrifugal Compressor

using 3D CFD Simulation

Conference Paper · December 2015

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Symposium on Applied Aerodynamics and Design of Aerospace Vehicle (SAROD 2015)
December 3-5, 2015, Thiruvananthapuram, India

Assessment of 1-D Solver for Performance Evaluation of Centrifugal

Compressor using 3D CFD Simulation
V. Martinez, P Ssheshan X. Lachaize and S. Senthil Kumar3,+
1
Polytechnic Orléans, Orléans, France
2,3
Vel Tech University, Chennai, India
(+ssenthil@veltechuniv.edu.in)

ABSTRACT
This paper presents the assessment of a 1D solver developed for predicting the performance of Centrifugal
Compressor. The solver uses Microsoft Excel for front end and Visual Basic for back end. All necessary 1D steady
compressible governing equations for both impeller and diffuser are incorporated in the solver. The Algorithm judges the
missing parameters needed for compressor performance automatically and calculate them iteratively through the
governing equations. The 1D solver could be used as a decision making tool for getting preliminary idea about
performance of compressor for different operating conditions before going for a 3D CFD analysis. The preliminary data
could be used as boundary condition for complex 3D analysis, instead of starting with crude initial conditions. In order to
assess the suitability of the 1D solver, experimentally validated 3D CFD results obtained for the same operating conditions
are used and the discrepancies between these two results are presented.
Key Words: Centrifugal Compressor, 1-D solver, CFD analysis, Impeller, Diffuser

NOMENCLATURE
T01 = Total Temperature at Inlet, K
ATM = Automatic Topology and Meshing
T02 = Total Temperature at Impeller Exit, K
Ca = Axial Velocity, m/s
T022 = Isentropic Total Temperature at Impeller
D2 = Exit Diameter of Impeller, m Exit, K

i = Loop Count Number u2 = Tip speed, m/s

N = Speed of rotation, rpm wc = Work Input, J/kg

Pratio0 = Total Pressure ratio of Stage 1. INTRODUCTION

PrImp0 = Total Pressure ratio of Impeller
R =Radius of Compressor, m
___________________________________________

Undergraduate Students, Polytech Orléans, Orléans,
France
2 overcome difficulties in the basic hand calculations,
Junior Research Fellow, Vel Tech University,
Chennai, India
3
Associate Professor, Vel Tech University, Chennai,
India
© V Martinez, P Ssheshan, X Lachaize and
S Senthil Kumar
SAROD 2015
Published in 2015 by MacMillan India Ltd.
Design of Turbomachinery is a challenging
task. It requires extensive experimentation and/or
three dimensional CFD simulations to find the
optimal design. Preliminary design process involves
hand calculations which are repeated over a number
of times to find the desirable values for the design
parameters. Then meanline design, throughflow
calculations are made and finally move to CFD
simulations [1]. The objective of this paper is to
by replacing the time consuming task with easier one.
A code has been developed for a single stage
centrifugal compressor using Microsoft Excel with
VBA at the back end. The secondary losses and other
three dimensional losses can be taken into account by
reducing the efficiency and slip factor accordingly.
The developed code has been validated with the 3D
CFD simulations.

1
2 V Martinez, P Ssheshan, X Lachaize and S Senthil Kumar
Extensive studies have been made on
centrifugal compressors to understand the flow and
improve its performance. The aerodynamic
characteristics of centrifugal compressor and
procedure for design can be found in Aungier [1],
Cumpsty [2] and Wilson [3]. Schleer [4] studied the
aerodynamic performance and stability of a
turbocharger centrifugal compressor with vaneless
diffuser. They found that the performance of
compressor is not affected by Reynolds number and
the tip clearance has dominating effect in the
secondary flow structure in the diffuser. Also,
reduced tip clearance gives higher pressure ratio, but
the onset of tip recirculation remains unchanged.
Zemp [5] studied the blade vibration in a compressor
as a result of inlet flow distortion numerically.
Development of shroud gap vortex was studied and
concluded that the total pressure loss increases with
mass flow rate at same speed and reduces with blade
speed for the same mass flow rate. It was observed
that k-ε turbulence model gives better predictions and
convergence for the CFD simulation and the
turbulence intensity has negligible effects on the
steady state CFD simulations
There have been various methods used for
preliminary predictions. Throughflow method is one
of the methods in designing turbomachinery in which
circumferentially averaged equations are solved to
get the meridional flow distribution. Detailed
description on throughflow methods can be found in
references [1] and [2]. Casey and Robinson [6]
proposed a throughflow method for radial
turbomachines that takes into account the blade
curvature, sweep, blockage, effects of choking on
flow distribution, and spanwise mixing. It has a novel
feature that it can also be used as a quasi-meanline
method, which avoids divergence of a throughflow
code from unrealistic gradient values. They used
turbulent diffusion for better predictions of mixing in
spanwise direction. In recent years, CFD played a
major role in understanding, designing and
optimizing compressors. Pasquale, et al. [7]
developed a throughflow code that makes use of
genetic algorithm and a meta model to perform multi-
dimensional optimization of turbomachinery blade
profile. The code predicts the circumferentially
averaged flow distribution on the meridional plane by
taking into account the aerodynamic and friction
forces. Galvas [8] developed a FORTRAN code to
predict the performance characteristics of a
centrifugal compressor by using analytical and
empirical correlations to compute losses. Although
this is just a 1-D calculation and high deviations are
recorded at some points, this tool offered simplicity
in preliminary design
The present work focuses on a tool similar
to that of Galvas[8] which is written in Visual Basic
with Excel in front end which will be of greater help
in the initial design phase, where repeated
calculations are required to get desired values.
2. 1-D SOLVER
2.1 Excel at Front End
Figure 1 shows the front end excel window
of 1-D Solver. By pressing the menu button, a
window pops up as shown in Figure 3, where we can
apply special conditions for the problem, like
presence of inlet guide vanes, type of exit-radial or
backward, formula to be used to calculate slip factor,
etc., Special conditions are also given either to
neglect the dynamic pressure/temperature at inlet or
to go on a loop to find out the inlet static density.
Additional data like exit blade angle, velocity
components can be entered in optional data window.
A fixed diameter ratio between inlet and exit can also
be maintained. Choice is also given to choose what
formula can be used to calculate the exit static
temperature. To facilitate knowing which formula
was used, formulae are assigned with a reference
name or number, which will be displayed on the
screen in adjacent cells and calculation methods
table.
2.2 VBA Code at Back End
In Excel, each variable is assigned a fixed
cell. The cells are referred for calculations. The code
first checks the variable for a value. If a value is
present, then it fixes the value for that variable and
will not try to calculate it from other derived values.
The code is written in such a way that the calculation
subroutine runs only if the value of the variable is not
specified. If the value is not specified, it runs the
corresponding sub-routine, which has all possible
ways of calculating that particular variable. The code
is executed line-by-line so that the whole code is set
to iterate more than once to calculate all variables
possible. The code was tested with the problems in
textbooks [9-12] and found to agree well with the
solutions. Figure 2 explains how to code solves a
particular problem from Yahya[9].
3. MODELING, ANALYSIS AND VALIDATION
3.1 Modeling
A centrifugal compressor with impeller of
diameter 400 mm and vaneless diffuser of outer
diameter 580mm is modeled in ANSYS BladeGen.
The impeller has 7 main blades and 7 splitter blades.
The blades have a backsweep of 30°. The blade angle
(β) and thickness (t) distribution of the blades are
 Assessment of 1-D Solver for Performance Evaluation of Centrifugal Compressor Using 3D CFD Simulations 3

followed to be as same as in Schleer[4]. A Tip 5. CONCLUSION

clearance of 1.2mm at the leading edge and 0.82mm
at the trailing edge is given. The final model of the A 1D solver was developed and assessed
compressor geometry is as shown in Figure 4. with 3D CFD model. The code agrees well with the
solutions. It can be used as a basis for more
3.2 Meshing sophisticated design methods such as throughflow
The compressor geometry is then meshed in analysis or 3D design.
TurboGrid using ATM Optimized approach. The y+ Acknowledgment
value near the walls are maintained less than 100.
Grids are made fine enough to capture the tip leakage This work has been carried out in Centre for
flows. The grids consisted of 6.5 lakh, 9 lakh and 12 Design, Engineering and Manufacturing (CDEM) of
lakh cells for the case of coarse, medium and fine Vel Tech Dr.RR Dr.SR Technical University,
respectively. The 9 lakh cells mesh was found to have Chennai, India
reached grid independence. REFERENCES
3.3 Solving and Post-Processing 1. Ronald H. Aungier, “Centrifugal
Single domain is chosen for solving with Compressor,” ASME Press, 2000
Total Pressure inlet and Mass flow outlet as boundary 2. Nicolas A. Cumpsty, “Compressor
condition. Compressible air (Ideal) is chosen as a Aerodynamics,” Longman, 1989
working medium. The inlet condition being 98.1kPa
of stagnation pressure and 293.15 K of Total 3. David G. Wilson, Design of High Efficiency
temperature for all the cases. At outlet, the design Turbomachinery and Gas Turbines, MIT Press, 1984
point mass flow rate is 4.1kg/s, but it is varied to find 4. Matthias W. Schleer, “Flow Structure and
the off-design performance of the compressor. The Stability of a Turbocharger Centrifugal Compressor,”
turbulence model is chosen to be steady state scalable Diss. Thesis, ETH Zurich, 2006
k-ε, which is found to be good for this application, as
mentioned in [5]. 5. Armin Zemp, “CFD Investigation on Inlet
Flow Distortion in a Centrifugal Compressor,”
The RMS residue target is set to 10-5 and Master’s Thesis, ETH Zurich, 2007
mass imbalance is monitored. Some points on the
diffuser domain are monitored for velocity 6. Michael Casey and Chris Robinson, “New
fluctuations to see if the solution has attained a steady Streamline curvature throughflow method for Radial
state. The solution is run on CFX Solver manager. Turbomachinery,” ASME Journal of
The iterations are made to continue until it achieves Turbomachinery, Vol. 132, July 2010.
RMS value of residue at the order of 10-4 and mass 7. David Pasquale, Giacomo Persico, Stefano
imbalance within ±0.1%. The solution thus obtained
Rebay, “Optimization of Turbomachinery Flow
is validated with the results of Schleer [4]. The
Surfaces Applying a CFD-Based Throughflow
overall static to stagnation pressure ratio obtained for Method,” ASME Journal of Turbomachinery, Vol.
different runs are found to be in good agreement with 136, March 2014.
that of Schleer[4] as shown in Table 1. Figure 5
shows Total pressure contour at mid plane and 3D 8. Michael R. Galvas, “FORTRAN Program
streamlines in 3D CFD domain. for Predicting Off-Design Performance of Centrifugal
Compressors”, NASA Technical Note TN D-7487,
4. ASSESMENT OF 1-D SOLVER WITH 3D November 1973.
SIMULATION RESULT
9. S.M.Yahya, “Turbines, Compressors and
The code was assessed with 3D CFD results Fans”, Tata McGraw Hill, 2010
and the values with percentage deviations are plotted.
The input data to the code was taken from the 3D 10. V. Ganesan, “Gas Turbines”, Tata McGraw
CFD case studied (Refer Table 2 and Table 3). (The Hill, 2011
input values are those for which error has not been 11. Dixon, Hall, “Fluid Mechanics and
calculated). We can see from the table that the exit Thermodynamics of Turbomachinery,” Butterworth-
pressure, exit blade angle and its derived results were Hienmann, 2010
over-estimated as a result of unaccountability of 3D
flow deviations. The rest of the values are in good 12. H.I.H. Saravanamutto, H. Cohen, G.F.C.
agreement with the 1-D results. Rogers, “Gas Turbine Theory,” Pearson, 2011
4 V Martinez, P Ssheshan, X Lachaize and S Senthil Kumar

Figure 1 1-D Solver Front End

Figure 2 Flow chart of sample calculation

 Assessment of 1-D Solver for Performance Evaluation of Centrifugal Compressor Using 3D CFD Simulations 5

Figure 3 Menu window in Excel front end

Figure 5 Total Pressure Contours at Midplane
and 3D Streamlines of the Compressor

Table 1 Comparison of Experimental [Schleer]

and CFD Results

Mass Flow Speed N Expected CFD

rate (kg/s) (RPM) Pressure Total to Static
Ratio Pressure Ratio
(at R=250mm)

4.1 22000 ≈3 2.87

3 16250 ≈1.95 1.83

2.378 13360 ≈1.55 1.53

1.476 9925 ≈1.3 1.30

Figure 4 Impeller geometry from Schleer [1] and

Computational domain (with Diffuser)
 6 V Martinez, P Ssheshan, X Lachaize and S Senthil Kumar

Table 2 Comparison of CFD Results with 1D code Table 3 Comparison of CFD Results with 1D code
at Desgin Point at Off-Design Point

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