22nd Congress of International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences, Harrogate, UK, 28 August - 1st September, 2000
Paper ICAS 2000-5.1.3

INVERSE DESIGN OF TURBOMACHINERY AIRFOILS USING THE NAVIER STOKES EQUATIONS

B. Kaplan, S. Eyi
Aeronautical Engineering, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, 06531 Turkey

Keywords: turbomachinery, airfoils, navier stokes equations, transonic, surface pressure distribution

In this paper an inverse design method is presented which couples a Navier-Stokes flow solver and a numerical optimization algorithm. The design method generates a turbomachinery airfoil, producing a specified surface pressure distribution at a transonic speed. A least-square optimization technique is used to minimize pressure discrepancies between the target and designed airfoils. In order to represent the nonlinear, rotational and viscous physics of transonic flows, Navier-Stokes equations are used to predict the flow field. Sensitivity derivatives are obtained using finite differencing. Effects of different design variables on the performance of design optimization are evaluated.

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