Application of Multipoint Optimization to the Design of Turbomachinery Blades

This paper presents a new integrated environment FINE™/Design3D developed for the optimization of turbomachinery compressor and turbine blade shapes. The methodology relies on the interaction between a genetic algorithm, an artificial neural network, a database and user generated objective functions and constraints. The optimization is coupled to the FINE™/Turbo environment of NUMECA. The present paper focuses on multipoint optimization. The generality of the formulation of the FINE™/Design3D optimization techniques allows the objective function to be based on the evaluation of the performance at different working conditions. The examples presented in the paper illustrate this new capability, showing the application of multipoint optimization to a turbine rotor and to a re-design of the NASA Rotor 37 transonic compressor rotor.© 2004 ASME