Paper 27: Calculation of the Flow past Turbomachine Blades

This paper considers the problem of determining the inviscid, subsonic compressible (or incompressible) blade-to-blade flow field through a turbomachine blade row, and presents two computer solutions, known as the ‘matrix’ and ‘streamline curvature’ methods, for solving this elliptic problem. In the former method the equations of motion are formulated in terms of a stream function and the numerical solution is based on finite difference approximations; in the latter, the equations of motion are solved in conjunction with the equation of continuity by an iterative process starting from a guess for the streamline pattern. Solutions for several blade profiles, giving flow patterns and blade surface velocity distributions, are included.