Extension and Validation of the Turbomachinery Capabilities of SU2 Open Source Computational Fluid Dynamic Code

Abstract

Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) tools have revolutionized the way to design engineering systems, but most established codes are proprietary and closed-source, making it difficult, if not impossible, to modify, debug or add new features to the code. To provide a freely available open-source CFD code for turbomachinery aerodynamics and aeroelasticity, this paper enhances the turbomachinery capabilities of the open-source SU2 code and demonstrates its capabilities of single-passage steady simulation, full-annulus unsteady simulation and aeroelasticity analysis in two high-speed compressors, namely NASA Stage 35 and TUDa-GLR-OpenStage, and a linear cascade SC1. For the steady simulation of NASA Stage 35, the SU2 results are validated against the measured data and verified against the commercial solver Ansys CFX, and the performance characteristics results are in reasonably good agreement with each other. For the steady simulation of TUDa-GLR-OpenStage, grid and turbulence model sensitivity studies are performed and results are validated against the measured data, and SU2 can predict both the performance characteristics and the radial profiles with sufficient accuracy. For the unsteady simulation of NASA Stage 35, it is demonstrated that SU2 can predict the propagation of inlet distortion equally well as Ansys CFX. For the linear cascade, SU2 can predict the unsteady pressure and aerodynamic damping coefficient accurately. The presented results demonstrate the turbomachinery aerodynamics and aeroelasticity capabilities of SU2. The major modifications of SU2 made in this work will be shared with the code maintainer and the community in the future.