Compressors are essential machines for a large number of modern manufacturing processes. Like the hearts pumping life to the production lines, compressors are vital to the operation of key industrial sectors, such as the petrochemical and the mining industries, which rely on compressors for critical tasks, ranging from temperature control to gas transportation and mixing. As a result, there have been continual efforts by the academic and industrial communities to improve the reliability and performance of such turbomachinery as new technologies become available.

Stability is a critical factor that limits the performance of compressors. The maximum mass flow output of a compression system is capped by choke, which is generally not a destabilizing phenomenon, and it is caused by the compressed medium reaching sonic conditions.