Finite element application on compressible flow in axial cascades

A two-dimensional blade-to-blade numerical solution for the inviscid trro-tational subsonic compressible flow through axial cascades, is presented.A finite element computer code based on stream function formulation isdeveloped. Grid networks composed of variable-area triangular elements. areadopted. Linear i~terpolation functions are used to ease the integration over tri-angles with a reasonable degree of accuracy.Special care has been paid for both of the leading and trailing edges. In thisregard, a combination of McDonald’s grid and Denton’s grid (with cusps) has been utilized. The main target of the cusp addition is to ~hift.the tagnation points at both of the leading and trailing edges t and so to provide an accurate solution with fewer mesh pionts.A step~wise (incremental) approach is used to account for the fluid flowcompressibilty, that is, the nonlinear problem is treated as piece-wise continu-ous linear problems .Reasonable agreement has been justified between the present finite elementnumerical results and the published experimental and numerical ones for several test cases.