Prediction of hub corner stall characteristics of a highly loaded low speed single stage fan

In this paper a numerical investigation has been presented on the stall mechanism of a highly loaded Single Stage Low Speed Fan designed for the research test facility to be installed at North Western Polytechnic University (NWPU) Xi’an, China. The results presented are for the design point, near stall and just stall operating conditions at design speed. Design point studies have been found to be an indicative of stall area. Unsteady method of domain scaling has been used to compute the results at near stall and just stall conditions. It has been found that unlike the conventional tip leakage flow of the rotor, stator hub section is mainly responsible for the stall of the fan. The flow mechanism has been discussed with correlation to the design variables and previous investigations. Commercial CFD code NUMECA FINE/Turbo has been used for computations; results have been compared with results obtained from commercial CFD code ANSYS-CFX. The loss prediction of latter code is conservative than the former. The stall mechanism predicted by both codes is analogous.