Abstract: Manufacturing variabilities of high-pressure compressor blades can hardly be avoided in aero-engines, which may seriously affect the aerodynamic performance of the compressors. To analyze the sensitivity of manufacturing variabilities on compressor performance, the rear stage of a high-pressure compressor is used to make the numerical simulation. Firstly, several typical manufacturing variabilities such as positional tolerance, profile tolerance and twisted tolerance are chosen and Gaussian distribution probability density function is used to determine the distribution of tolerance. Then the effective law of manufacturing variabilities to compressor's performance such as isentropic efficiency and total pressure ratio are investigated through numerical simulation, and the sensitivity parameters are extracted. The results indicate that when the position of blade changes, aerodynamic performance of high-pressure compressor are always reduced, for example, the axial position makes the surge margin decrease almost 25%, while profile and twisted tolerance can lead to negative linear variation; throughout these three variabilities, the sensitivity of performance to the blade twist and axial position are larger, while circular position and profile tolerance have minor effects.

Key words: aerodynamic performance, high-pressure compressor, manufacturing variability, sensitivity analysis