Experimental investigation of an axial-flow-compressor inlet stage operating at transonic relative inlet Mach numbers V : rotor blade-element performance at a reduced blade angle

At a corrected speed of 1100 feet per second, the low-blade-angle rotor operated with a relative inlet Mach number of 1.2, a diffusion factor of 0.65, and an axial velocity ratio of 0.71 in the tip region (11 percent of passage height away from the outer wall). The measured minimum-loss coefficient was 0.35, and this value falls above a previous correlation of rotor losses with diffusion factor. Through a comparison with data for three other rotors, the occurrence of high losses was related to a high suction-surface Mach number. These comparisons also indicated that axial velocity ratios between 0.73 and 1.10 have no independent effect on losses.