A PRECONDITIONED SOLUTION SCHEME FOR THE COMPUTATION OF COMPRESSIBLE FLOW IN TURBOMACHINERY AT ARBITRARY MACH NUMBERS

Abstract

A preconditioned solution scheme for the computation of compressible flow in turbomachinery at arbitrary Mach numbers is presented. The preconditioning technique used is applied to a state-of-the-art explicit, time-marching Navier-Stokes code which originally was developed for compressible, high-speed turbomachinery applications. It combines the ideas of low Mach number preconditioning and artificial compressibility method into a unified approach where principally fluids with arbitrary equations of state can be simulated. As shown by the test cases presented, it allows the code to simulate flows efficiently and accurately independent of the Mach number. A description of the Navier-Stokes equations for rotating coordinate systems, along with the solution scheme and the details of the preconditioning method is given.

Since turbomachinery computations are often performed on truncated domains, the solution scheme should be used in conjunction with non-reflecting boundary conditions. A change in the time-dependency of the equations due to preconditioning necessitates a modification of the boundary conditions. Thus, a derivation of the appropriate boundary conditions for the presented preconditioned scheme was performed and the resultant equations are given in this paper. The effectiveness of the new boundary conditions is demonstrated by comparing them with both boundary conditions that use the standard one-dimensional characteristic approach and the original boundary conditions for the non-preconditioned case.