Impact of Fluid Substitution on the Performance of an Axial Compressor Blade Cascade Working with Supercritical Carbon Dioxide

Recent research on turbomachinery design and analysis for supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO₂) power cycles has relied on computational fluid dynamics. This has produced a large number of works whose approach is mostly case-specific, rather than of general application to sCO₂ turbomachinery design. As opposed to such approach, this work explores the aerodynamic performance of compressor blade cascades operating on air and supercritical CO₂ with the main objective to evaluate the usual aerodynamic parameters of the cascade for variable boundary conditions and geometries, enabling “full” or “partial” similarity. The results present both the global performance of the cascades and certain features of the local flow (trailing edge and wake). The discussion also highlights the mechanical limitations of the analysis (forces exerted on the blades), which is the main restriction for applying similarity laws to extrapolate the experience gained through decades of work on air turbomachinery to the new working fluid. This approach is a step toward the understanding and appropriate formulation of a multi-objective optimization problem for the design of such turbomachinery components where sCO₂ is used as the operating fluid. With this objective, the paper aims to identify and analyze what would be expected if a common description of such computational design problems similar to those where air is the working fluid were used.