A novel test facility for transonic fans has been constructed and commissioned at École Centrale de Lyon (ECL) within the Project PHARE-2. The facility is instrumented with multi-physical measurement systems to deeply investigate aeroelastic and aeroacoustic phenomena. To enable long-term fundamental research, the composite material open-test-case rotor ECL5 is currently under development, which shall be established as a new reference case for method development. Within the present publication, the project objectives, the current rotor design, ECL5v2, and details on the test facility are presented. With the goal to establish future academic collaborations, the authors aim to initiate a discussion in the research community in an early stage of the test case development to receive constructive feedback on the design and research approach.

This paper describes observed modal oscillations arising from a feedback mechanism between an acoustic resonance in the exit flow channel and aerodynamic and aeroelastic disturbances in a transonic fan stage. During tests, the fan suffered from rotating stall and surge which were preceded by low frequency pressure fluctuations. Through a range of aerodynamic and aeromechanical instrumentations, it was possible to determine a clear chain of cause and effect, whereby geometrical asymmetries trigger local instabilities and modal oscillations through an interaction with the system acoustics. To the authors knowledge, this is the first time that modal oscillations occurring before stall are attributed to multiphysical interactions, showing that acoustic characteristics of the system can influence the aerodynamic as well as the aeromechanical stability of fans. This bears implications for the stability assessment of fans and compressors because first, the stability margin may be affected by standing waves generated in bypass ducts or combustion chambers, and second, geometrical variations of the rotor blades which are believed to be beneficial for aeromechanical stability may lead to complex coupling phenomena.

Unsteady aerodynamic phenomena appearing close to the stall boundary in axial fans and compressors have been the subject of extensive investigations. A particular phenomenon known as “rotating instabilities” typically occurs in the tip region at highly loaded conditions and is often linked to blade vibrations. During rig and engine testing, it is usually identified by the characteristic shape of its pressure spectra. In the 1990s, this shape has been explained as the result of a circumferentially propagating disturbance, which is unsteady in a frame of reference rotating with the disturbance. In this analysis, conclusions regarding its propagation speed and frequency have been made based on the analysis of spectral peaks, and this method is still often used to classify unsteady aerodynamic phenomena. However, in high subsonic and transonic machines, where aeroacoustic and aeroelastic phenomena interact with aerodynamic disturbances, the interpretation of measurements using spectra alone is challenging. The present article aims to demonstrate the difficulties and subtleties associated with the analysis of measurement signals, which need to be overcome to correctly interpret stall precursor signatures. At the example of a recent investigation on a composite fan, the consequences of sensor placement and postprocessing techniques are discussed with a focus on spectral averaging, isolation of non-synchronous phenomena, and multisensor cross correlation methods. It is seen that the interpretation of phenomena based solely on spectral peaks and their spacing can be misleading and that the characteristic features of a rotating instability spectrum do not require an unstable pulsating disturbance.

A composite fan stage representative of a modern Ultra High Bypass Ratio (UHBR) architecture has been investigated experimentally on a novel test facility at Ecole Centrale de Lyon. These measurements show indications for strong overloading of the tip region resulting in extensive blockage of the blade passage. The performance of the fan is analyzed with extensive instrumentation including radial profiles upstream and downstream of the rotor. Unsteady pressure measurements help to interpret the flow structure in the tip region. The results are presented across a range of operating points on the design speedline. At the stability limit, the machine suffers from non-synchronous vibrations, which result from small-scale aerodynamic disturbances propagating between the leading edges. Detailed analysis of the occurring waveforms is presented for two operating speeds. In order to further analyze the observed phenomena, a numerical study has been conducted using the Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) solver elsA. The results of steady calculations are discussed in comparison with the detailed experiments. Unsteady simulations near the stability limit accurately predict the aerodynamic disturbances observed during non-synchronous vibrations (NSV). The obtained results are unusual for typical state-of-the-art transonic fans, as they show the same behavior as high-pressure compressor front stages, dominated by a blockage caused by tip-leakage flow. Even though flutter is not observed, the observed non-synchronous vibration mechanism is a critical aeroelastic phenomenon which is of great interest for future designs of low-speed fans.

This work investigates high-frequency measurements for the contribution to the understanding of different stall inception types in high-speed multistage compressors. A 3.5-stage high-speed axial multistage compressor is investigated with a 2 MW test rig in the Laboratoire de Mécanique des Fluides et d’Acoustique (LMFA) at Ecole Centrale de Lyon, France. Two different types of instabilities arise in this compressor as a function of shaft speed. At part speed, a controversy called “rotating instability” type flow field modulation is identified with the measurements. New results are the demonstration of the periodic behavior of this instability and the analogy to classical frequency modulation, periodic to one revolution of the instability. Furthermore, the amplitude of the instability is modulated by the time period of a rotor revolution. At nominal speed, the abrupt spike type stall inception is detected, taking usually less than five rotor revolutions.

With the advancement of modern fan architectures, the lack of experimental benchmarks for the research community became apparent in the recent years. Enormous effort in the method development could not be validated on representative geometries and motivated the development of the open-test-case ECL5/CATANA. A carbon fiber fan stage has been designed by Ecole Centrale de Lyon and shared with the community in 2021. The fan is representative of a modern ultra high bypass ratio (UHBR) architecture with sonic design speed. The reference configuration has been investigated experimentally on a novel test facility with multiphysical instrumentation. In this publication, the results of the first experimental campaign are presented with a detailed analysis of the aerodynamic performance and system symmetry. The presented results comprise full stage mappings across the whole operating range for three main speedlines (55%, 80%, and 100%) using performance rakes, unsteady wall pressure arrays, tip clearance, and stagger angle measurements. Radial profiles of intake boundary layer and rotor exit conditions at selected conditions complete the full validation dataset for steady and unsteady aerodynamic simulations. Results are discussed in comparison to blind-test Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) simulations of different international institutes. Significant prediction inaccuracies of the tip flow and corner separations of the stator are observed and reveal the requirement of real blade geometry measurements at running conditions. This article is accompanied by a publication with a focus on aeroelastic instabilities observed near the stability limit. The results represent a comprehensive dimensional benchmark dataset and allow method validation on multiple levels of fidelity for the aerodynamic and aeroelastic research community.