Experimental and Numerical Investigation of the Flow Field in the Radial Inlet of a Centrifugal Compressor

This paper presents an experimental and numerical study of the flow field in a typical geometry of a centrifugal compressor radial inlet. A five-hole probe system, which makes the probe calibration and the data acquisition automatically controlled by computer, was developed and used to measure the pressure, velocity and flow angle distributions inside the radial inlet. The testing portion consists of the entrance and exit of the radial inlet, the outlet section of the suction nozzle and the exit of the plenum, including 46 sampling holes and 923 measuring points. In parallel with the experiment, a computational analysis was also carried out to simulate the internal flow of the radial inlet with a commercial CFD Code. The numerical results are compared with the experimental data. It shows a good agreement between CFD and the measurement on most sections. Based on the experiment and simulation, this study reveals the detailed flow conditions in a radial inlet, which helps to figure out how the complex flow pattern in a radial inlet forms and develops as well as the influences on the downstream components. It yields an improved understanding of the principle of flow phenomena in radial inlets, and gives recommendations for optimizing the structure design of the radial inlet of centrifugal compressors.