Design of compressor blades considering efficiency and stability using CFD based optimization

To design a highly loaded axial transonic compressor several objectives need to be considered simultaneously. From an aerodynamic perspective, one of the major requirements is high efficiency at a specific operating condition where the fuel consumption is of main interest. Furthermore, the compressor needs to have a sufficient stall-margin along the entire flight envelope to ensure a stable operating range. This work is focused on creating an efficient design method which produces a trade-off between high stall margin and high efficiency. The design method is based on an automatic multiobjective optimization process divided into two steps. In the first step, 2D blade profiles are optimized where both efficiency and stall margin are considered. Once the optimization is finished the selected profiles are stacked together to be further optimized in 3D. When going to the second step, i.e. a 3D optimization, one can focus on a smaller set of design variables thereby reducing the time to get what is considered the optimal solution. The results show that it is possible to rate designs with potential of having high stall margin and high efficiency both in the 2D and 3D optimization. The main contribution in this work is the design method, which offers an efficient way of designing robust blades where the designer can decide the best trade off between stall margin at part speed and efficiency at the design point. Copyright \ua9 2012 by ASME