Experimentally Determined Stability Parameters of a Subsonic Cascade Oscillating Near Stall

Tests were performed on a linear cascade of airfoils oscillating in pitch about their midchords at frequencies up to 17 cps, at free-stream velocities up to 200 ft/s, and at interblade phase angles of 0 deg and 45 deg, under conditions of high aerodynamic loading. The measured data included unsteady time histories from chordwise pressure transducers and from chordwise hot films. Unsteady normal force coefficient, moment coefficient, and aerodynamic work per cycle of oscillation were obtained from integrals of the pressure data, and indications of the nature and extent of the separation phenomenon were obtained from an analysis of the hot-film response data. The most significant finding of this investigation is that a change in interblade phase angle from 0 deg to 45 deg radically alters the character of the unsteady blade loading (which governs its motion in a free system) from stable to unstable. Furthermore, the stability or instability is governed primarily by the phase angle of the pressure distribution (relative to the blade motion) over the forward 10–15 percent of the blade chord. Reduced frequency and mean incidence angle changes were found to have a relatively minor effect on stability for the range of parameters tested.