Intermediate Turbine Duct Design and Optimization

Design improvements of intermediate transition ducts is an area of growing importance. This due to the trend of increasing the radial offset between the lowand high-pressure systems in modern turbo-fan engines. Shape optimization used for turbomachinery applications has become a powerful aero-design tool. Thanks to the rapid development of computer technology, computational fluid dynamics may be used in the optimization process. In the present work the response surface methodology together with design of experiments has been th optimization strategy of choice. An intermediate turbine transition duct containing nine non-lifting struts has been designed and optimized for minimum total pressure loss. The struts are designed from a given duct inlet swirl profile using low-cost streamline calculations. The final design is to be installed in the large-scale low-speed turbine facility at Chalmers for measurements within the EU Sixth Framework Programme project AITEB-2.