Accelerating turbomachinery design

Abstract

It is widely accepted that a company's market penetration, and hence its profitability, is very closely linked to the speed with which it can produce a new design. This paper describes a method which aims to assist the designer in producing higher performance turbomachinery designs more quickly by accelerating the process by which they are produced. The adopted approach, based on a recently derived model of the turbomachinery design process, combines an enhanced version of the 'Signposting' design process management methodology with industry-standard analysis codes and CFD, permitting process-wide iteration, near instantaneous generation of guidance data for the designer and fully automatic data handling. A highly successful laboratory experiment based on the design of a large High Pressure Steam Turbine is described and this leads on to current work which incorporates the extension of the proven concept to a full industrial application for the design of Aeroengine Compressors with Rolls-Royce.