V ol. 16　 N o.

4 　　　　　　　　　　　　 CHIN ES E J OU R N A L O F A ER ON A U T ICS　 　 　　　　　　　　　　　 November 2003

The Development of Highl y Loaded Turbine Rotating

Blades by Using 3D Optimization Design Method of
Turbomachinery Bl ades Based on Artificial Neural
Network & Genetic Al gorithm
1 1 2
ZHOU Fan -zhen , F ENG Guo -t ai , JIANG Hong -de
( 1. A cademy of Energy Science and Engineering, H arbin Instit ute of technology ,
H arbin　150001, China)
( 2. Institute of Engineering T hermop hy sics , A cademia Sinica, Beij ing 　100080, China)

Abstract: 　 I n o rder to impro ve tur bine internal efficiency and low er manufacturing co st, a new
highly lo aded r otating blade has been develo ped. T he 3D optimizatio n desig n method based on artifi-
cial neur al netw ork and g enetic algor ithm is adopt ed to construct the blade shape. T he blade is
stacked by the cent er of gr avity in radial direction w ith five sections. F or each blade section, indepen-
dent suction and pr essure sides ar e co nstruct ed fr om t he camber line using Bezier curves. T hree-di-
mensional flow analy sis is car ried out to v er ify the perfor mance of the new blade. I t is found that the
new blade has impro ved the blade per form ance by 0. 5% . Consequently, it is verified that the new
blade is effectiv e to improv e the tur bine inter nal efficiency and to low er t he turbine weig ht and m anu-
facturing cost by r educing the blade number by abo ut 15% .
Key words: 　 optimizatio n desig n; hig hly loaded; ro tating blades; ar tificial neural netw ork; g enetic
alg orit hm
采用基 于神经网 络及遗传算 法的叶轮 机械叶片三 维优化设计 方法开 发高载 荷透平 动叶片. 周凡
贞, 冯国泰, 蒋洪德. 中国航空学报( 英文版) , 2003, 16( 4) : 198- 202.
摘　要: 　为了 提高透平的 内效率及 降低制造成 本, 采 用基于神经 网络及遗 传算法的叶 轮机械叶
片三维 优化设计方 法, 开 发了一种高 载荷动叶 片。
该叶 片是以5个截面 的重心沿径 向积叠而 成。
每
个截面 的内背弧 是以基于叶 型中弧线 的 Bezier 曲线来构 造。
三维 流动分析 表明, 新 叶片提 高效率
0. 5% 。
通 过减少叶片 数约15% , 新开发的 高载荷动叶 片不仅有效 地提高了 透平的内 效率, 同时降
低了透平重量和制造成本。
关键词: 　优化设计; 高载荷; 透平动叶片; 人工神经网络; 遗传算法
文章编号: 1000-9361( 2003) 04-0198-05　　　中图分类号: V 235. 1　　　文献标识码: A

　 　 In the f ield of t urbomachinery , select ion of dynam ic performance is g reatly deteriorat ed .

[ 1, 2]
blade pitch is a very import ant subject relat ed to Zw eifel' s aerody namic loading f act or is well
opt imization of blade number, w eig ht and m anu- know n as a st andard crit erion for determinat ion of
fact uring cost reduction . If no separat ion occurs on opt imum blade pitch. In general, the loading fac-
the blade surface and t he blade aerody namic load- tor has an opt imum value which leads to loss m ini-
ing dist ribution is properly controlled, t he blade of- mizat ion . If t he optimum value is exceeded, t he
fers hig her eff iciency, reduces w eight and low ers blade perf orm ance is w orsened due t o t he flow sep-
cost in comparison w it h a conventional blade . If aration . On the other hand, if the narrow er blade
the blade pit ch becomes larg e enough t o lead f low pitch is selected ( t his m eans a low er loading
separation f rom the blade surface, the blade aero- fact or ) , t he loss increases due to t he increase of
Received dat e: 2003-04-23; R evision received dat e: 2003-08-05
Foundation item: Project G 1999022307 support ed by 973
A rt icle U RL: ht t p: / / ww w . hkx b. n et . cn/ cja/ 2003/ 04/ 0198/
© 1994-2010 China Academic Journal Electronic Publishing House. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. http://www.cnki.net
 N ovember 2003 T he D evelopm ent of Highly Loaded Turbine Rot at ing Blades by U sing 3D……
the blade surf ace area and the num ber of wakes
w hich leads t o higher frict ion , t railing -edge and
mixing losses. T herefore, the blade pit ch has to be
selected t o near t he opt im um value.
In the case of a gas t urbine for an aeroeng ine
or a pow er plant , a highly loaded blade has been
actively invest ig at ed t o achieve a high pressure ra-
tio, which causes large flow t urning and hig h ex it
Mach number f low . A larger loading fact or has
been adopt ed, f or ex am ple approx im at ely 1. 0[ 3] ,
to reduce bot h t urbine weight and cost wit hout
perf ormance degradation.
However , in many large capacit y steam t ur-
bines for a pow er plant , volume flow rate is larg er
than t hat of gas turbines, so t he blade becomes rel-
at ively hig her in steam t urbines. T heref ore, it is
diff icult t o adopt a loading f actor value of more
than 1. 0 over the midspan w it hout det eriorat ion of
perf ormance, ex cept for a short er blade such as a
smaller capacity t urbine. A hig hly loaded rot at ing
blade f or nuclear st eam turbines has already been
[ 4]
developed by Segawa et al , w hich w as examined
mainly by 2-D f low analysis and cascade t est s.
[ 5]
Segaw a et al also developed a new hig hly loaded
rotating blade f or the high and int erm ediat e pres-
sure st eam turbine com ponent s of fossil pow er
plants , by adopt ing t he inverse met hod to m odif y
the blade shape and verified the results of st ag e
perf ormance of t he new rot ating blade by 3-D CF D
analysis and m odel air turbine t ests .
T his paper describes t he 3D optimizat ion de-
sign t echnique based on art if icial neural net w ork
and genet ic algorithm, the developm ent of highly
loaded rot at ing blade , w ith a reduct ion of blade
numbers by 15% comparing w it h conventional ro-
tating blade, and the verif icat ion result s of t he per-
formance of the new rot ating blade by 3-D CF D
analysis.
1　Basic Principle of the Optimization
Algorithm
1. 1　The Introduction of the bl ade profile design
methods
In general, t here are t w o methods for blade
© 1994-2010 China Academic Journal Electronic Publishing House. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. http://www.cnki.net
・ 199・
prof ile design: inverse, direct . T he inverse design
is fast er because it is based on the tw o -dimensional
flow analysis t o f orm the airf oil according t o t he
airfoil pressure profile. However, t he locat ion of
t he prof ile control points is dif ficult to control and
numbers of arcs are generally large . T his makes it
diff icult t o use t he same curve definit ion routine for
design and manufact uring . On t he other hand, di-
rect design may require more t ime in the aerody-
namic design process, but can g enerate more accu-
rat e designs in the manuf acturing process. Both
methods rely on CF D technology , as a t urbulent
flow analysis is needed t o evaluat e t he blade perfor-
mance.
However, w it h t he rapid development in com-
put er hardware and CF D technolog y , t he conven-
tional aerodynam ic design on turbomachinery
blades has been chang ed revolutionarily. An int e-
grated t urbomachinery blade opt imization sy stem,
capable of aut omat ic , it erat ive improvement of
t hree dim ensional g eomet ry under a Navier-Stokes
CFD solver, has been developed.
Numerical opt imization algorit hms coupled to
CFD solvers have got demonstrable success in im-
proving t he perf ormance of a num ber of aerody-
namic component s, and a successf ul system can
short en t he design t im es and low er the manufac-
turing cost s. T he syst em comprises t hree primary
components: an opt imizat ion algorithm, a g eomet-
rical m odeler and a Navier -St okes solver . T he de-
sign philosophy is to allow diff erent versions of
t hese component s t o be used int erchangeably t o in-
vest igat e each one's im portance in t he overall opt i-
mizat ion process.
1. 2　The basic introduction of the optimization
method
In t his paper , t he NUM ECA Design Environ-
ment f or t urbomachinery applications ( an opt i-
mizat ion soft ware FINE/ Design 3D) is used. T he
opt imization technique used is based on t he concept
of f unction approx imat ion . An Art if icial Neural
Net w ork is used to construct the approx imat e
model. An artificial neural net w ork schematically
depicted in Fig. 1 is composed of several elementary
 ・ 200・ ZHO U Fan-zhen, FEN G G uo -tai, J IA N G Hong -de CJA

processing unit s called nodes. T hese nodes are ar-
ranged in layers and joined w ith connections of dif-
ferent int ensit y, called connect ion w eight , in order
to f orm a parallel architecture. A netw ork is gen-
erally com posed of several layers : an input layer ,
one or several hidden-lay ers, and one out put layer .
Each element of the input vect or is connected
t o each node in layer 1 t hroug h a connection
w eight matrix . A node perf orms t he summ at ion of
t he w eighted inputs and bias t o form it s own scalar
out put . T he result is t hen processed through t he
t ransfer function F 1. T he signal is propagat ed in
t he sam e w ay through t he next layer up t he out put
layer.

F ig . 1　A rt ificial N eur al N etwo rk

　 　 T he learning process consists in f inding t he isent ropic eff iciency of t he tot al to t otal and m ain-
connection w eig ht matrices ( W) and the bias ( b) tain t he throat .
in order t o make the act ual out put vector coincide
w it h the prescribed output vector. Pairs of input /
2　Developm ent of Highly Loaded Rot ating
out put vectors must be available in a training
database that t he net work w ill learn to predict . Blades and 3D Flow Field Analysis
T rained net w orks t end t o g ive reasonable answ ers 2. 1　 The devel opment of highly l oaded rotating
to inputs that they have never seen . T heref ore, it bl ades
is possible to train a netw ork on a represent at ive For construct ing the 2D blade sect ion profiles,
set of input / output pairs and get good result s first ly def init e t he cam ber curve as show n in Fig .
w it hout t raining the net work on all possible input /
out put pairs . T he most w idespread learning algo-
rit hm is called " L earning by back-propagat ion of
the errors" .
Genetic algorit hm is adopt ed for t he opt imiza-
tion. T his algorit hm m imics t he nat ural behaviour
in terms of biolog ical evolution in order to reach
the best possible solut ion to a g iven problem. An
init ial populat ion is generat ed and pairs of individu-
F ig. 2　Definition of the camber cur ve
als are select ed f rom this population based on their
perf ormances. Weak individuals tend t o die bef ore 2. T hen, bot h suct ion and pressure sides are con-

reproducing w hile st ronger ones lives longer and structed in t he f orm of a high deg ree Bezier curve

bear many off spring . w it h respect t o the camber curve, as show n in

In this paper, the object ive is t o maximize t he Fig . 3. In t his paper , the blades are st acked
smoothly by t he cent er of gravit y in t he radial di-

© 1994-2010 China Academic Journal Electronic Publishing House. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. http://www.cnki.net
 N ovember 2003 T he D evelopm ent of Highly Loaded Turbine Rot at ing Blades by U sing 3D…… ・ 201・

Fig. 3　Definition o f the suctio n side curve

rect ion w ith f ive sect ions in 0, 0. 25, 0. 57, 0. 84,
and 1. 0 relat ive blade height. T here are 3 cont rol
point s on suct ion side of each blade sect ion , and 2
point s on t he pressure side. For each blade sec-
tion, only the f ive f ree geom et rical param et ers
could be chag ed to opt imize the 3-D blade . T here-
fore , t here are t ot al 25 f ree geometrical param e-
ters.
T he optimizat ion of t he blade pit ch is evaluat-
ed from Zw eif el' s aerodynamic loading fact or ,
w hich corresponds t o t he condition of large inci-
dence. T he variations of t he loading f actors f rom
root t o t ip f or both convent ional and new blades
are 0. 53 to 0. 67 and 0. 61 to 0. 78, respect iv ely . —— befor e optimizing 　- - - - - after optimizing
Firstly, reduce the num ber of t he original Fig. 4　 T he compar iso n of blade pr ofile
blades by 15% and change t he stagger angles to at different sections
maintain t he t hroat. T hen , parameterize it by Au- used. In order t o speed the convergence, full
toBlade Fitt ing Module. Af ter t hat , generat e t he mult igrid strat egy is adopted. T he g rid used t o cal-
database w it h 57 samples because the number of culate is show n in Fig . 5, and t he num ber of grid is
free g eomet rical paramet ers is 25. F inally , st art 57×65×129= 477945. T ot al pressure, tot al t em-
the optimizat ion procedure t o achieve the new perature and flow direction are specified on the in-
highly loaded rotating blade. let boundary and are assumed t o be constant in t he
Configurat ions of the new hig hly loaded blade circum ferent ial and the radial directions. Inlet f low
and the convent ional one at various sect ions are angles are set equal t o t he outlet flow ang le of t he
compared in Fig. 4.
2. 2　Perf ormance anal ysis of the highl y l oaded
rotating bl ades
　 　 T hree -dimensional viscous Navier -St ockes
steady f low analy ses are performed t o verify t he
aerodynam ic perform ances of both the new highly
loaded blade and the convent ional blade . U pw ind
schemes are used f or spatial discretizat ion , f our or-
der Rung e-Kut ta met hod is adopted for the t im e
term, and Boldw in-Lom ax t urbulence m odel is Fig . 5　Calculat ion gr id

© 1994-2010 China Academic Journal Electronic Publishing House. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. http://www.cnki.net
 ・ 202・ ZHO U Fan-zhen, FEN G G uo -tai, J IA N G Hong -de
upst ream stator blades by t he result of quasi 3-D
calculat ion . St at ic pressure is described on the out-
let boundary. T he isent ropic ef ficiency of the tot al
to tot al for t he optimized highly loaded blade is in-
creased by 0. 5% as compared to t he convent ional
one .
Fig. 6 show s t he result s of 3-D f low analy ses
for both the convent ional and t he highly loaded
blades. T he tot al-to -t otal ef ficiency , which is nor-
malized by eff iciency of the conventional blade at
the m idspan, show s t hat t he new blade is im-
proved alm ost along the entire blade height , espe-
cially near the root, but it is det eriorat ed near t he
tip.
Fig . 6　 T otal -to-total isentropic efficiency
3　Conclusions
On t he one hand, t he blade 3D optimizat ion
design method based on artificial neural net w ork
and genet ic algorithm avoids t he very t im e con-
suming in t he direct met hod, for t he designers
need to continue t o change t he blade prof ile geom e-
try according to the st atic pressure or isentropic
Mach num ber distributions on the blade surf ace in
order t o get low er loss. On t he other hand, it also
av oids the very time consuming and overcom es t he
diff iculties in t he inverse met hod, f or not only
much CF D comput ing t ime is needed, but also it is
diff iculty t o select t he st at ic pressure or isentropic
Mach num ber dist ributions on t he blade surf ace .
© 1994-2010 China Academic Journal Electronic Publishing House. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. http://www.cnki.net
CJA
In this paper, alt hough t he opt im ization method is
very time consum ing too in t he database generat ing
and optimizat ion desig ning for CF D com put at ion,
it inf requent ly need to interv ene t he design pro-
cess . Af ter f it t ing t he blade , almost all the w ork is
done by t he computer aut omatically, and a good
result can be g ot finally.
Reducing the number of t he blades by 15% , a
new highly loaded rotating blade is developed by
adopt ing t he optimizat ion design m et hod. T hree-
dimensional f low analyses are performed t o verif y
t hat the ef ficiency of the new designed blade is im-
proved by 0. 5% as compared w it h t hat of the o-
riginal blade.
It is import ant in t his paper t hat the optimiza-
tion desig n method gives a very new eff icient w ay
for turbomachinery blade design.
References
[ 1] 　 Zw eif el O. T he spacing of t urbo-machine blading , especially
w ith large angular deflect ion[ J ] . Brow n Boveri R ev , 1945,
32( 12) : 436- 444.
[ 2] 　St ew art W L, G lassman A J. T urbine design and application:
chapter 4, blade design[ R ] . N A SA SP-290, 1973.
[ 3] 　Curt is E M , Hodson H P, Banieghbal M R, et al. Develop-
ment of blade profiles f or low pressure t urbine applications
[ R] . A SM E 96-G T-358, 1996.
[ 4] 　Segaw a K, Shikano Y , Tsubouchi K , et al . D evelopment of
highly loaded rot at ing blade for steam t urbines[ A ] . Proc In-
ternat ion al Joint Pow er Generat ion Conf erence PWR [ C ] .
A SM E, 1999, 34( 2) : 125- 131.
[ 5 ] 　 Segaw a K , Shikano Y , T subouchi K , et al . Performan ce
verification of a highly loaded st eam t urbine blade [ R ] .
JPGC 2001/ PWR -19125. 2001.
Biography:
ZHOU Fan-zhen 　 Born in 1965. He
received B. S. fr om U niv er sity of
Shang hai for Science & T echnology in
1988, and then became an Engineer in
Harbin T ur bine Company, Lt d. He re-
ceiv ed M . S. fro m Institute of Eng ineer -
ing T hermophysics, Chinese Academ y
of Sciences in 1995. N ow , he is wo rking for his doctor al
deg ree in Harbin Institute of T echno log y. T el: ( 0451)
6413261 E-mail: fanzhen@ public. hr . hl. cn.