Aerodynamic design of forward swept transonic compressor rotors and propellers

Forward swept compressor/fan rotor has been proven to have high efficiency and high stall margin. For the transonic forward swept rotor design, we developed a non-monotonic meanline angle distribution to reduce the shock strength and shock loss. The CFD analysis shows that both the design point efficiency and the part speed stall margin are significantly improved.

The tangentially forward swept technique is also applied to airplane propeller blades. Both the CFD and wind tunnel tests demonstrate that the efficiency and stall margin are improved. It is expected that the forward swept propeller blades will also bring the benefit of lower noise.

Publications

Hu, Z. and Zha, G.-C. and Montgomery, M. and Roecken, T. and Orosa, J., "Transonic Compressor Rotor Design Using Non-monotonic Meanline Angle Distribution", GT2007-27994, ASME 2007 Gas Turbine Technical Congress & Exposition, May 14-17, 2007, Montreal, Canada
Craig Paxton, Peter Gryn, Erisa K. Hines,Ulises Perez, and Gecheng Zha, "Design and Tests of Forward Swept Propellers at Low Speed", AIAA-2003-1069, AIAA the 41st Aerospace Sciences Meeting and Exhibit Conference, Jan. 6-9, 2003, Reno, NV