Rotating Stall of a Highly Loaded Compressor and Its Plasma Flow Control

With unsteady simulations, it is found that the Tornado-like separation vortex originating from the rotor tip flow separation is the main driving force of the highly loaded compressor studied in this paper. The formation of the Tornado-like separation vortex is closely related to the development of the rotor tip leakage flow at near stall point. Under the interaction between rotor tip leakage flow and flow separation, a rotating disturbance is formed. The rotating disturbance observed is very similar to the rotating instability and is featured by a characteristic band around 50% blade passing frequency. When the steady plasma actuation is imposed at the initial stage of the compressor rotating stall, the development of the dynamic stall is stopped. However, when the rotor tip flow separation which triggers the compressor rotating stall develops to a larger scale, the steady plasma actuation can no longer suppress the compressor rotating stall.