Improving the quality of designing low-flow stages of centrifugal compressors due to verification and validation of calculated CFD models

The quality of the produced centrifugal compressors largely depends on the design quality of the flow path. In order to carry out high-quality design of low-flow stages of centrifugal compressors, in this work, a numerical model of a low-flow stage is verified and validated, which are based on modern methods of computational fluid dynamics - CFD (computational fluid dynamics) as part of CALS technologies. In the numerical model of the stage, clearances and labyrinth seals were modeled. The issues of using intergrid interfaces, application of turbulence and roughness models are considered. The obtained settings of the numerical model were used to validate seven model stages for the range of the optimal conditional flow rate Φopt = 0.008-0.018 at Mu = 0.785-0.804. The simulation results were compared with experimental data.