The drive for ever higher aircraft efficiency inevitably leads to a reduction in core compressor size; over the past 30 years the height of the rear stages of a typical aeroengine has reduced by 40%.&nbsp; This trend will continue; a further reduction of almost 50% is expected by 2050.Reducing the size of core compressors causes problems.&nbsp; Mechanical limits mean that it is not possible to reduce the aerofoil thickness pro-rata with the reduction in height and/or chord. Manufacturing limits mean that the effects of manufacturing tolerances become proportionally larger as compressor size is reduced.&nbsp;It is shown in this paper that the two greatest sources of increased profile loss as core size is reduced comes from the mechanical constraints placed on the maximum aerofoil thickness and on the trailing edge thickness. &nbsp;Furthermore, mitigation strategies are presented which successfully minimised or eliminated these loss sources.&nbsp;Multi and single stage research compressors were used to show that it was possible to hold trailing edge losses constant on an aerofoil equivalent to 30% smaller than those flying today.The constraint on maximum thickness was found to come from a stack up of manufacture tolerances.&nbsp;&nbsp; This comes from the classical engineering view that tolerances should be treated as independent.&nbsp; This is an unnecessary simplification.&nbsp; &nbsp;By recognising that manufacturing processes are in fact not random, it was possible to challenge the tolerance stacking and thereby minimise the efficiency penalty associated with reducing core size.

Aerodynamic Mitigation of Mechanical Constraints in Small Core Compressors

Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/GT/GT2021/volume/84898

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