New approach of inverse design of transonic compressor rotor blade via prescribed isentropic Mach distributions without modification of governing equations

Abstract

Shock loss is the primary source of total pressure loss of transonic axial compressors. Reducing the shock by redesigning the geometry of rotor is of great interest for turbomachinery designers. However, the complex flow field involving shock waves, shock-boundary interaction, intense secondary flows, etc., in the compressor makes the design of rotor difficult. The conventional method of design and optimization is computationally intensive and time-costly. This study introduces an inverse design method to design rotor blades corresponding to prescribed isentropic Mach number distributions with no modification of flow-governing equations. An artificial neural network is trained to predict the isentropic Mach number distributions of any deformed blades. Then, with the pattern search optimization, the blade corresponding to the prescribed isentropic Mach number distributions can be achieved. When the aerodynamic parameter database is calculated and the neural network is obtained, this method can design large numbers of blades of changed isentropic Mach number distributions immediately, without modifying the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) flow solver. The design process is fully automatic and efficient. In this study, NASA Rotor 37 is redesigned and optimized as test cases. Some analysis on the influence of blade shape on aerodynamic characteristics of the rotor is represented in this study.