TOWARDS AN INTERACTIVE AERODYNAMIC DESIGN OF TURBOMACHINES - FLOW COMPUTATION

A newly developed CFD tool for the design of different types of turbomachines is presented. A fully three-dimensional steady-state Euler solver is the kernel part of this tool. It is based on a cell centered finite-volume method and Godunov-type time-marching explicit TVD ''almost everywhere'' second-order accurate numerical scheme. Coarse/fine grid multi-level, local time steps, ''frozen'' derivatives techniques and non-reflecting outlet boundary conditions are used for acceleration of convergence and reduction of computational expenses. The developed procedure for the outflow boundary allows direct prescription of the flow rate instead of the pressure ratio which is imposed usually in turbomachinery flow calculations. Comparisons of the computational results with experimental data for axial and radial turbomachines illustrate the possibilities and the reliability of the method. The devised NURBS based geometry modeling algorithm seems to be very promising for turbomachinery applications.