Experimental and computational analysis of a transonic compressor rotor

Assessment of computational fluid dynamic (CFD) codes used for the design and analysis of turbo machinery is a subject covered by many researchers. NASA Rotor 37 is one of the most used transonic compressor test casess. In a blind test case conducted by ASME and IGTI, and for a subsequent test case conducted by AGARD, most of the participating codes over predicted pressure and temperature ratios, and failed to predict certain features of the downstream flow field. These days, this test case is still an important assessment of industrial and research CFD codes. In this work, STAR-CCM+ is used to predict the transonic compressor flows. The turbulence is represented through a RANS model with the SST (Menter) k- variant and the all y+ wall treatment. Comparisons are made with overall performnce maps and span wise profiles of aerodynamic parameters. Results obtained are in ggod agreement with the experimental data although there are still some important discrepancies.