Integrated aerodynamic design and analysis of turbine blades

This paper presents an integrated approach for aerodynamic blade design in an MDO (multidisciplinary design optimization) environment. First, requisite software packages and data sources for flow computations and airfoil modeling are integrated into a single cybernetic environment, which significantly enhances their interoperability. Subsequently, the aerodynamic blade design is implemented in a quasi-3D way, supported by sophisticated means of project management, task decomposition and allotment, process definition and coordination. Major tasks of aerodynamic blade design include 1D meanline analysis, streamsurface computations, generation of 2D sections, approximation of 3D airfoils, and 3D flow analysis. After compendiously depicting all the major design/analysis tasks, this paper emphatically addresses techniques for blade geometric modeling and flow analysis in more detail, with exemplar application illustrations. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.