The use of analytic surfaces for the design of centrifugal impellers by computer graphics

This paper shows how analytic surfaces can be used to define the vanes of an impeller of a centrifugal compressor. The analysis has been given of a cubic-linear patch for representing three-dimensional geometries. An example has shown how this type of patch can be successfully used to model the geometry of centrifugal or mixed flow impellers having 'swept back vanes at the outlet. The analysis has been programmed for the Atlas computer at the Computer Aided Design Centre (CADC), Cambridge and set up in such a way that the designer can examine systematically a range of impeller shapes.