Unsteady effects at the interface between impeller-vaned diffuser in a low pressure centrifugal compressor

In this paper, Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD) is applied to the analysis of the unsteady rotor-stator interaction in a low-pressure centrifugal compressor. Numerical simulations are carried out through finite volumes method using the Unsteady Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes Equations (URANS) model. Proper Orthogonal Decomposition allows an accurate reconstruction of flow field using only a small number of modes; therefore, this method is one of the best tools for data storage. The POD results and the data obtained by the Adamczyk decomposition are compared. Both decompositions show the behavior of unsteady rotor-stator interaction, but the POD modes allow quantifying better the numerical errors.