Abstract: A numerical tool is developed to evaluate the performance and stability of fan/compressor with inlet distortion. First, the modeling method to replace the blade row forces with distributed bulk body force source terms is investigated. Then a three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code is developed by adding the model into an Euler solver to simulate the fan/compressor flow field with inlet distortion. A NASA Rotor 35 flow field with clean inlet, inlet steady total pressure distortion and combined total pressure total temperature distortion are simulated respectively with the code. It demonstrates that the results obtained by the code of NASA Rotor 35 with clean inlet agree well with the solutions of Reynolds average Navier-Stokes (RANS). In the case with inlet distortion, this code can obtain the key feature of the interaction of the rotor and upstream flow field, and its influence on rotor performance and stall margin.

Key words: aerospace propulsion system, fan/compressor, inlet distortion, body force model, stability