MULTIDISCIPLINARY COMPRESSOR BLADING DESIGN PROCESS USING AUTOMATION AND MULTI-OBJECTIVE OPTIMIZATION

摘要

The compressor is one of the most important and challenging components within an aero engine. The design of a compressor is achieved by many multidisciplinary design iterations. The aerodynamic design process is usually subdivided into several stages, where the number of parameters and the complexity increase through the entire process. The first two steps consist of the mean line prediction and the through flow calculation which define global flow parameters and the basic annulus geometry. The subsequent blading process is needed to find appropriate blade shapes which fulfill the through flow requirements. In this stage of the aerodynamic blading procedure the feedback from the mechanical discipline is always mandatory because within the aerodynamic process only mechanical rules of thumb are used. This paper shows, how the time consuming blading procedure can be accelerated by the use of different aerodynamic and mechanical design and analysis tools integrated into an automated process optimization environment. Furthermore, the application of modern multi-objective optimization strategies will be presented, which provide trade-off solutions between the contradicting design goals. The results presented in this paper stem from German national funded VIT project which is currently carried out at Rolls-Royce Deutschland in close collaboration with the University of Cottbus in Germany (TU Cottbus).