Abstract
Full-thermal heat-soak of machinery is vital for acquiring accurate aerodynamic performance data, but this process often requires significant testing time to allow all facility components to reach a steady-state temperature. Even still, there is the potential for heat loss in a well-insulated facility, and this can lead to inaccurate results. The implementation of a torquemeter to calculate performance metrics, such as isentropic efficiency, has two potential advantages: (1) the method is not susceptible to effects due to thermal heat loss in the facility, and (2) a torquemeter directly measures actual torque, and thus work, input, which eliminates the need to fully heat-soak to measure the actual enthalpy rise of the gas. This paper presents a comparison of aerodynamic performance metrics calculated both from data acquired with thermal measurements as well as from a torquemeter. These tests were conducted over five speedlines for a shrouded impeller in the Southwest Research Institute Single Stage Test Rig facility. Isentropic efficiency calculated from the torquemeter was approximately 1-2 efficiency points lower than the isentropic efficiency based on thermal measurements. This corresponds to approximately 0.5-1 degrees C in heat loss in the discharge collector and piping. Furthermore, observations from three full-thermal heat-soak points indicate the significant difference in time required to reach steady-state performance within measurement uncertainty tolerances between the torque-based and thermal-based methods. This comparison, while largely suspected, has not yet been studied in previous publications.