Study of flow dynamics in rotor-stator cavity with low-radius preswirl inlet

The flow dynamics in rotor-stator cavity with low-radius pre-swirl inlet was investigated both experimentally and numerically. The effects of flow rate and rotation speed on flow in the cavity were studied, and the results show that the rise of static pressure through cavity increased with flow rate and rotation speed. The concept of effective angular momentum was introduced, the ratio of which to angular momentum at cavity inlet is defined as angular momentum coefficient, and by analyzing the relative magnitude of angular momentum at inlet and work done by disk torque, it is found that the corrected turbulent flow parameter and the pre-swirl inlet Reynolds number were the two main nondimensional parameters affecting angular momentum coefficient. Given the geometry of pre-swirl system, when the rotation speed changed, angular momentum coefficient decreased with the increase of corrected turbulent flow parameter, and when corrected turbulent flow parameter was larger than 0.0646, angular momentum coefficient changed slowly, and the effective angular momentum was about 70%~90% of the inlet angular momentum. When the inlet velocity changed, angular momentum coefficient first decreased and then increased with the increase of corrected turbulent flow parameter. © 2016, Journal of Propulsion Technology. All right reserved.