Automated Component Preliminary Design and Evaluation in the Overall Engine Using Fully Coupled Approaches

Abstract

Engine development is a long and complex process. Errors or unfavorable decisions made in the preliminary design phase have a lasting negative impact on the entire development process. The later a bad design decision has to be corrected, the more costs, time and effort are required for the correction. It would therefore be better to make forward-looking decisions right from the start. Thanks to today's simulation methods, this is possible to the greatest possible extent. The use of suitable methods supports and significantly shortens the development time. With an additional process automation through the coupling of design programs from different disciplines, promising solutions can be separated from less good ones early on in the development process using a broad multi-disciplinary approach. This paper presents a numerical approach to evaluate overall engine performance while designing the high-pressure compressor (HPC). A parametric component design process is used to generate a model for a 2-D through flow analysis. This is coupled with a performance program via the data model and process management of a gas turbine design framework. Design as well as the off-design information of thermodynamic engine and aerodynamic component simulation are shared with each other. This way, more information can be gained than it would be the case for both disciplines individually. Therefore, different approaches of this form of multi-disciplinary coupling, often referred to as zooming, are compared regarding their usability and their numerical effort for the design of an HPC in an overall engine. The approach that shows the best results in this comparison is used for an example optimization process of a military engine HPC.