MAE Seminar: High-Speed Compressor Experiments – the Magic in the Minutiae

Abstract: 

High-speed turbomachinery experiments are critical to engine-development because they provide the important mid-TRL validation of new technologies. Precise, extensive measurement campaigns may include numerous sensors with multiple experiments performed over several years generating significant databases. Effects that have typically been considered as negligible can have measurable impacts on the effort to reconcile CFD models with experimental measurements. Some examples from the Purdue Three-Stage Axial Compressor Research Facility will be explored, including setting experimental conditions for different inlet conditions to measure compressor performance and resonant blade vibratory response.

Bio: 

Professor Key is the Avrum and Joyce Gray Professor in Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Purdue where she is also the Associate Head for Graduate Studies in Mechanical Engineering, while holding a courtesy faculty position in Aeronautics & Astronautics. She has a bachelor’s degree in Aeronautics & Astronautics from Purdue (2000) and a master’s in mechanical engineering from Purdue (2002). She won the von Karman Prize during her Diploma Course at the von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics working on turbine tip flows. She returned to Purdue and completed her PhD in 2007 focusing on vane clocking effects in a multistage compressor. She joined the faculty of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue in the fall of 2007.

Prof. Key’s experimental research focuses on understanding the underlying flow physics associated with primary and secondary flow phenomena in fans and axial and radial compressors to enable more efficient, robust designs. Recent lab expansions include a fan research facility for distortion-tolerant fan and casing treatment investigations to enhance stall margin with minimal efficiency penalties. She utilizes additive manufacturing technologies to obtain measurements in flow fields that have traditionally been nearly impossible to access.

She was the recipient of the 2014 International Gas Turbine Institute’s (IGTI) Dilip Ballal Early Career Award, named a University Faculty Scholar in 2019, was an Executive Leadership in Academic Technology, Engineering, & Science (ELATES) Fellow in 2023, and received the AIAA Ground Testing Award in 2025. She has been an Associate Editor for the ASME Journal of Turbomachinery and is serving her second assignment as Associate Editor for the AIAA Journal of Propulsion and Power. She is the incoming Director of the GUIde 8 Consortium, an ASME Fellow, and an AIAA Associate Fellow.