Design of Subsonic Axial Flow Compressor Rotor Blade

Axial flow compressors/fans are widely used machines in industrial as well as aircraft gas turbine engines. The performance improvement of such machines has improved significantly due to key efforts of researchers and engineers. The hard work and research inputs require for the development of a single compressor which includes years of careful study and investigations. Rotor is a primary element of any axial compressor/fan which imparts kinetic energy to fluid, and so, the designers have emphasized more on the rotor design. Present study incorporates an effort for the development of a low-speed axial flow compressor/fan rotor blade based on NACA 65-series airfoil. The limiting design parameters are selected from the grounded axial fan test rig available in the department lab. The study initiates with one-dimensional flow parameters calculation based on velocity triangle at mean location and is extended for total 11-radial locations from hub to tip. The blade angles are obtained from correlations available in literatures, and the corrected angles are used to set up selected airfoil profile along spanwise locations using commercial modeling tool. Once the airfoils are stacked on one another, a solid blade model is developed. This is further extended to develop entire rotor with calculated number of blades. The data obtained from the present study are validated with the available literature plots and are in good trend. The obtained blade has high pressure variation and total pressure loss close to tip. The blade has higher camber close to hub and lower camber at higher spanwise positions.