Casing treatment is an effective technique in extending stall margin of axial and centrifugal compressor. However, its impacts on the stall behaviour of mixed-flow compressor are still not completely understood until now. To conquer this issue, unsteady full-annulus simulations were conducted to investigate the stall mechanism of a mixed-flow compressor with and without axial slot casing treatment (ASCT). The circumferential propagating speed of spike inception resolved by the numerical approach is 87.1% of the shaft speed, which is identical to the test data. The numerical results confirmed that the mixed-flow compressor fell into rotating stall via spike-type with and without ASCT. The flow structure of the spike inception was investigated at 50% design rotational speed. Instantaneous static pressure traces extracted upstream of the leading edge had shown a classic spiky wave. Furthermore, it was found that with and without ASCT, the mixed-flow compressor stalled through spike with the characteristic of tip leakage spillage at leading edge and tip leakage backflow from trailing edge, which is different from a fraction of the centrifugal compressor. The resultant phenomenon provides corroborating evidence for that unlike in axial-flow compressor, the addition of ASCT does not change the stall characteristics of the mixed-flow compressor. The flow structure that induced spike inception with ASCT is similar to the case with smooth casing. In the throttling process, tip leakage flow vortex had been involved in the formation of tornado vortices, with one end at the suction side, and the other end at the casing-side. The low-pressure region relevant to the downward spike is caused by leading-edge separation vortex or tornado vortex. The high-pressure region relevant to the upward spike is induced by blockage from the passage vortex. These results not only can provide guidance for the design of casing treatment in mixed-flow compressor, but also can pave the way for the stall waring in the highly-loaded compressors of next-generation aeroengines.
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