Development of Advanced Compressor Airfoils for Heavy-Duty Gas Turbines: Part I — Design and Optimization

Abstract

A new family of subsonic compressor airfoils, which are characterized by low losses and wide operating ranges, has been designed for use in heavy-duty gas turbines. In particular the influence of the higher airfoil Reynolds numbers compared to aeroengine compressors and the impact of these differences on the location of transition are taken into account. The design process itself is carried out by the combination of a geometrical code for the airfoil description, with a blade-to-blade solver and a numerical optimization algorithm. The optimization process includes the design-point losses for a specified Q3D flow problem and the off-design performance for the entire operating range. The family covers a wide range of inlet flow angle, Mach number, flow turning, blade thickness, solidity and AVDR in order to consider the entire range of flow conditions which occur in practical compressor design. The superior performance of the new airfoil family is demonstrated by a comparison with conventional controlled diffusion airfoils (CDA). The advantage in performance has been confirmed by detailed experimental investigations, which will be presented in Part II of the paper. This leads to the conclusion that CDA airfoils which have been primarily developed for aero engine applications are not the optimum solution, if directly transferred to heavy-duty gas turbines. A significant improvement in compressor efficiency is possible, if the new profiles are used instead of conventional airfoils.

Multi-Level Multi-Objective Multi-Point Optimization System for Axial Flow Compressor 2D Blade Design

“…Equation 2 , and w 3 are the weights of each term at the objective function. These weights were used to dictate design philosophies to the design system [16].…”

“…Blade curvature distribution can be changed using the weight function, H (x), which has been defined as a linear combination of three sinusoidal-shape function illustrates by Eq. (16). The weighing coefficients, y i , are the outer-loop variables which are determined through multi-level optimization process.…”

Advanced Endwall Contouring for Loss Reduction and Outflow Homogenization for an Optimized Compressor Cascade

“…On the right hand side, the loss-incidence characteristics show The profile section isentropic Mach number distribution is shown in Figure 7, left. It can be seen that the DLR airfoil shows a more frontloaded design, often seen in new airfoil development projects, such as Siemens HPA-Airfoils (see Köller et al [25] and Küsters et al [26]). It is still subsonic in OP0.…”

New response surface model and its applications in aerodynamic optimization of axial compressor blade profile

“…Meanwhile, much attention has been paid to the study of numerical optimization in design optimization of turbomachinery, and successful applications can be seen in literature [4][5][6].…”