Pressure pulsations occurring in volumetric compressors manifold are still one of the most important problems in design and operation of compressor plants. The resulting vibrations may cause fatigue cracks and noise. Accuracy of the contemporary method is not sufficient in many cases. The methods for calculating pressure pulsation propagation in volumetric compressors manifolds are based on one-dimensional models. In one-dimensional models, the assumption is made that any installation element may be simplified and modeled as a straight pipe with given diameter and length or as a lumped volume. This simplification is usually sufficient in the case of small elements and long waves. In general, the geometry of the element shall be also considered. This may be done using two ways: experimental measurements of pressure pulsations, which lead to transmittance approximation for the investigated element, or CFD analysis and simulation for the acoustic manifold element. In this paper, a new method based on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation is presented. The main idea is to use CFD simulation instead of experimental measurements. The impulse flow excitation is introduced as a source. The results of simulation are averaged in the inlet and outlet cross sections, so time only dependent functions at the inlet and outlet of the simulated element are determined. The transmittances of special form are introduced. On the basis of introduced transmittances, the generalized four pole matrix elements and impedance matrix elements may be calculated. The method has been verified on the basis of experimental measurements.

The paper presents experimental investigations of pressure fluctuations near the tip clearance region of the rotor blades of the axial-flow low-speed compressor stage in stable and unstable parts of the overall performance characteristic. In this investigation, unsteady pressure was measured with the use of high frequency pressure transducers mounted on the casing wall of rotor passage. The pressure signals and their frequency characteristics were analyzed during the steady-state processes, before the rotating stall, during the transition from the steady-state process to the rotating stall, and during a stabilized phenomenon of low-frequency rotating stall. As the operating point moves to the unstable region of flow characteristic, an inception of the rotating stall can be observed, which rotates with a speed of about 41.4% of the rotor speed. The results of this study confirm that in the low-speed axial compressor stage operating in a rotating stall regime there appears one stall cell that spreads over to adjacent rotor blade channels. As the flow rate is reduced further, the frequency of the rotating stall decreased to 34.8% of the rotor speed and the number of blade channels with the stall cell increases.

Casing treatment in the form of circumferential grooves over a rotor blade tips is used for improvement of an axial compressor performance. Usually, these grooves extend compressor’s stall range (stable operational range) but decrease its efficiency. In the paper, there are presented main results of investigations on grooves that influence positively efficiency of compressor. There were investigated traditional (typical) and newly developed groove configurations. Certain grooves combine increase in efficiency with extension in stall range.

Fault Tree is one of the traditional and conventional approaches used in fault diagnosis. By

identifying combinations of faults in a logical framework it’s possible to define the structure

of the fault tree. The same go with Bayesian networks, but the difference of these probabilistic

tools is in their ability to reasoning under uncertainty. Some typical constraints to the

fault diagnosis have been eliminated by the conversion to a Bayesian network. This paper

shows that information processing has become simple and easy through the use of Bayesian

networks. The study presented showed that updating knowledge and exploiting new knowledge

does not complicate calculations. The contribution is the structural approach of faults

diagnosis of turbo compressor qualitatively and quantitatively, the most likely faults are

defined in descending order. The approach presented in this paper has been successfully

applied to turbo compressor, which represent vital equipment in petrochemical plant.

The paper presents a research program carried out to improve understanding of the fluid dynamics mechanisms that lead to rotating stall in the axial flow low speed compressor stage. The stalling behavior of this compressor stage was studied by measuring unsteady casing pressure by means of a circumferentially and axially spaced array of high frequency pressure transducers. Another probe used was a disc static pressure probe, with the pressure transducer, for in-flow and out-flow measurements along the blade span. It was expected that understanding of the fluid dynamics will facilitate at least two important tasks. The first was to accurately predict of when and how a particular compressor would stall. The second was to control, delay, or eventually suppress the rotating stall and surge. In consequence, one could extend the useful operating range of the axial compressor. Another motivation for the research was to compare the results from the three applied analysis techniques by using a single stall inception event. The first one was a simple visual inspection of the traces, which brought about a very satisfactory effect. The second one was application of spatial Fourier decomposition to the analysis of stall inception data, and the third method of analysis consisted in application of wavelet filtering in order to better understand the physical mechanisms which lead to rotating stall. It was shown that each of these techniques would provide different information about compressor stall behavior, and each method had unique advantages and limitations.