T TOC

Proceedings of
ASME TURBOEXPO 2002
3-6 June 2002, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

GT-2002-30445

AERODYNAMIC DESIGN OPTIMIZATION

OF AN AXIAL FLOW COMPRESSOR ROTOR

Chan-Sol Ahn and Kwang-Yong Kim

Department of Mechanical Engineering,
Inha University
253, Yonghyun-dong, Nam-gu,
Incheon 402-751, KOREA
chansolahn@hanmail.net , kykim@inha.ac.kr

ABSTRACT more popular. Gradient-based optimization methods have been

Design optimization of a transonic compressor rotor
(NASA rotor 37) using the response surface method and three-
dimensional Navier-Stokes analysis has been carried out in this
work. The Baldwin-Lomax turbulence model was used in the
flow analysis. Three design variables were selected to optimize
the stacking line of the blade. Data points for response
evaluations were selected by D-optimal design, and linear
programming method was used for the optimization on the
response surface. As a main result of the optimization, adiabatic
efficiency was successfully improved. It was found that the
optimization process provides reliable design of a
turbomachinery blade with reasonable computing time.
INTRODUCTION
Complex three-dimensional flow structure containing
secondary flows, vortices, boundary layer separations, wakes
and shock waves, is commonly found in turbomachinery (1).
Shock-wave/boundary-layer interaction is also an important
phenomenon of flows in turbomachinery. The location and
strength of the shock waves as well as the location of separation
induced by shock-wave/boundary-layer interaction are essential
factors to evaluate the aerodynamic performance in these
applications. Therefore, accurate prediction of these
phenomena, such as by three-dimensional Navier-Stokes
analysis, is of practical importance. There have been many
successful attempts to reproduce such complex flow phenomena
by numerical analysis (2-5).
The wide and rapid spread in the use of CFD in the design
processes has led to the design of more efficient
turbomachinery. The recent enhancement of the computing
environment has made numerical optimizations using CFD
most widely used in design optimizations (6,7). However, the
largest disadvantage of these methods is the possibility to fall
into a local minimum with non-smooth and noisy objectives and
constraints. The adjoint variables method (8), developed
recently, is regarded as one of most efficient gradient-based
methods, but needs significant reprogramming in the analysis
routine. On the other hand, response surface method (9,10), as a
global optimization method, has many advantages over the
gradient-based methods. Local sensitivity analysis is not
required. The information is collected from various sources and
by different tools. Multiple criterion as well as multiple design
point optimizations can be handled. Parallel computations can
be easily performed. And, it smooth out the high frequency
noise of the objective function and is thus expected to find a
solution near the global optimum. Recently, with these
advantages, the response surface methods are being applied to
many single- and multi-disciplinery optimization problems (11-
13).
In the design of turbomachinery blade, one of the typical
geometric parameters which are affected most significantly by
the three-dimensional flow structure, is the stacking line, which
determines the relative circumferential coordinates of blade
sections being stacked in the radial direction. A leaned and
skewed blade can decrease the total energy loss through a
reduction in secondary flows accompanied by a reduction in
local diffusion in the blade passages. For example, in a turbine
application, leaned, positively curved, and negatively curved
blade cascades were tested experimentally by Han, et al. (14) In
the case of the negatively curved blade, the secondary vortical
losses of the cascade were greatly reduced, and the efficiency
was raised. In many other studies (6, 15-17), sweep, skew and

1 Copyright © 2002 by ASME

dihedral effects on blade performance have been investigated.
A gradient-based optimization method combined with a
three-dimensional thin-layer Navier-Stokes solver was
presented by Lee and Kim (6) to find an optimum shape of a
stator blade in an axial compressor through calculations of
single stage rotor-stator flow. In this work, optimum stacking
line was found to design a custom-tailored three-dimensional
blade for maximum efficiency with other parameters fixed.
Chung, et.al. (7) applied the similar optimization method to the
design of blade section of axial compressor rotor.
In this paper, the response surface method using three-
dimensional thin-layer Navier-Stokes analysis to optimize the
shape of a rotor (NASA rotor 37) blade, is described. The
airfoil stacking line, which is an important factor to determine
the three-dimensional blade shape, is chosen as the variable to
be optimized. The stacking line is skewed toward the rotating
direction.
FLOW ANALYSIS
The steady governing equations, i.e., three-dimensional
thin-layer Navier-Stokes equations and energy equation, are
solved on body-fitted grids using an explicit finite-difference
scheme. Baldwin-Lomax model (18) is chosen as the turbulence
model. This model is one of the simplest models, but shows the
performance comparable to those of two-equation models in the
prediction of turbomachinery flows (19). An explicit Runge-
Kutta scheme proposed by Jameson, et al. (20) is used to solve
flow from initial to steady state with a spatially varying time
step to accelerate convergence. Artificial dissipation terms were
added to resolve shocks. Mach numbers in each direction, total
pressure, and total temperature are given at the inlet. At the exit,
the hub static pressure ratio is specified, and the radial
equilibrium equation is solved along the blade span. A periodic
tip clearance model is used to resolve tip clearance flows,
explicitly. No-slip and adiabatic wall conditions are used.
H-type grids for the inlet flow region, C-type grids around
the rotor, and O-type grids for tip-clearance region, are used.
Grids are overlapped by one cell at the interface between two
adjacent grid blocks because of the node-centered finite-
difference scheme used in the solver. At the interface, the
solutions next to the boundary are integrated circumferentially
at each spanwise location and then they are stored for use as
boundary conditions for the neighboring grids.
RESPONSE SURFACE METHOD FOR OPTIMIZATION
Optimization using response surface method (RSM) (10)
is a series of statistical and mathematical processes; generation
of data by numerical computations or experiments, construction
of response surface by interpolating the data, and optimization
of the objective function on the surface. Although RSM was
devised to obtain empirical correlation from the experimental
data, the ability to reduce the number of experiments let this
method be applied widely to the optimization problems (21).
The polynomial-based response surfaces are commonly
employed in RSM. Unknown coefficients of polynomial are
obtained from a regression process. The response model is
usually assumed as a second-order polynomial, which can be
written as follows.
n n
(1)
η = β 0 + ∑ β j x j + ∑ β jj x 2j + ∑∑ β ij xi x j
j =1 j =1 i≠ j
where n is the number of design variables, and the number of
coefficients (βo,β1, etc.) is nt = (n + 1)(n + 2) / 2 . To determine the
coefficients, standard least-squares regression can be used. In
this case, the number of data must be larger than the number of
coefficients.
The design of experiment (DOE) is important for selecting
design points in order to reduce the number of data needed for
constructing response surface. Among the different types of
DOE techniques, D-optimal design (22) is employed in this
work for the representation of design space. With the number of
design points only 1.5 to 2.5 times the number of coefficients in
the response model, reliable results can be obtained (13, 23).
Giunta, et al. (24) showed that this technique constructs the
response surface with sufficient reliability in case with five
design variables.
OBJECTIVE FUNCTION AND DESIGN VARIABLES
Adiabatic efficiency is used in the definition of the
objective function. If the temperature rise is not large, the
specific heat at constant pressure is nearly the same at the inlet
and exit. Then, the objective function is defined as follows.
f = 1 −η (2)
where,
γ −1
 P0 ex  γ
  −1
 P0 in  (3)
η=
T0 ex
−1
T0 in
P0 and T0 are total pressure and total temperature, respectively.
And, subscripts, in and ex indicate inlet and exit of the blade
section, respectively
Concerning the compressor blade design, in the case of
controlled diffusion airfoil shapes, efforts to reduce loss by
controlling diffusion on the surface of a blade section have been
relatively successful. However, these design methods have not
been developed sufficiently to allow design of full-span blade
shapes that satisfy the complicated three-dimensional flowfield
in turbomachinery. Therefore, in this work, to take account for
the effects of three-dimensional flow structure in the design,
stacking line optimization of rotor blade was regarded as the
main objective of the design.
2 Copyright © 2002 by ASME
 Z δ1 δ2
Y X
Stac king line
L
ω
Shr oud
Hub
Figure 1. Design Variables
In the present work, three geometric variables which
determine the stack line profile on the plane of rotation, are
chosen as design variables. Fig. 1 indicates the design variables;
skew angle at a midspan section (δ1), skew angle at the tip (δ2),
and height (% span) of the midspan section from the hub (L). As
suggested by Cai and Xu (17), and Beiler and Carolus (16), the
ranges of design variables were adjusted, to improve the
performance of the blade, so that the blade is forward skewed;
10 ≤ L ≤ 70 , − 0.1 ≤ δ 1 ≤ 0.3 , and − 0.2 ≤ δ 2 ≤ 0.4 .
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Surface grids of the rotor are shown in Fig. 2. The
computational grids consist of 45×35×63 H-type grids at inlet,
181×46×63 C-type grids around rotor, and 121×13×13 O-type
grids in the tip clearance region. Thus, total 644,212 grids are
used. The average number of iterations and CPU time, to obtain
the converged solution for single flow analysis, were
approximately 3,000 and 23 hours with 1GHz Pentium-III
processor, respectively.
Figure 2. Blade surface grids
NASA rotor 37, a low-aspect ratio rotor for axial-flow
compressor, was optimized in this work. This rotor was
originally designed and tested by Reid and Moore (25). The
design pressure ratio is 2.106 at a mass flow of 20.19 kg/sec,
with a measured choking mass flow of 20.93 kg/sec. The rotor
has 36 multiple-circular-arc blades with a hub-tip ratio of 0.7,
an aspect ratio of 1.19, and a tip solidity of 1.288. The running
tip clearance is 0.0356 cm (0.45 percent span). In the
experiment (25), static and total pressure, total temperature, and
flow angle were measured at two axial stations designated
stations 1 and 2 in Fig. 3. Station 1 and station 2 were located
4.19 cm upstream and 10.19 cm downstream of hub leading
edge of the blade, respectively. In this work, the computational
domain is bounded by stations 1 and 2. And, all the reference
properties correspond to the values at station 1.
Z
Station 1
Shroud Leading edge
Y X
Station 2
90% span
70% span
50% span
30% span
Trailing edge
Hub1
Figure 3. Meridional view of Rotor 37
To construct the response surface, each range of design
variables is normalized, so that the dimensionless variable
varies from –1 to 1. A 3n (n=3) full factorial design, shown in
Fig. 4, is created by specifying the lower bound, midpoint and
upper bound (-1, 0, and 1) for each design variable. For three
design variables, ten unknown coefficients in eq. (1) should be
determined. The number of data needed to determine these
coefficients is 1.5 to 2.5 times the number of coefficients.
Among 33 nominated points, the fifteen points for response
evaluations, shown in Table 1, were selected by using D-
optimal design.
Figure 4. A 33 full fractional experimental design (27
points)
3 Copyright © 2002 by ASME
 Flow analyses for fifteen different blade shapes which The values of unknown coefficients were determined with
were selected by D-optimum design were carried out at 98% the data at the selected points by the commercial statistics
choked mass flow to compare the computational results with software, SPSS. The reliability of the response surface is
experimental data of Reid and Moore (25). improved by t-statistics and adjusted R2 method (22). Results of
ANOVA and regression analysis (9) are summarized in Table 2.
Exp. No. L δ1 δ2 The coefficients of response surface function determined by
ANOVA and regression analysis are listed in Table 3.
1 -1 -1 -1 Optimum design variables are obtained as follows;
2 1 -1 -1 L=52.71%, δ1=0.07560°, and δ2 =0.2182°. The optimum point
3 0 0 -1 on the response surface was found by a linear programming
method. The optimized stacking line is shown in Fig. 5.
4 -1 1 -1
Stacking line is represented by a quadratic function, which is
5 1 1 -1 determined by the three points located on the hub, at the
6 0 -1 0 midspan, and at the tip, respectively. Fig. 6 compares the three-
7 -1 0 0 dimensional shapes of initial and optimized blades.
8 1 1 0 As a result of the optimization, the adiabatic efficiency,
i.e., the main objective of present optimization is successfully
9 -1 -1 1
increased by 0.7%. However, as shown in Table 4, the other
10 0 -1 1 properties such as total pressure, total temperature and absolute
11 1 -1 1 Mach number at station 2 in Fig. 3, are decreased.
12 1 0 1
13 -1 1 1 100
90
14 0 1 1
80
15 1 1 1
70
Table 1. Experimental points (selected by D-optimal 60
% span

method) 50
40

Model R R square Adjusted Std. error of 30

Initial
R square the estimate 20 Final
1 .975 .950 .939 .2004 10

0
Table 2. Results of ANOVA and regression analysis -0.1 0 0.1 0.2 0.3
Skew angle [degree]

Coefficients Std. Error Figure 5. Optimized stacking line

β0 87.4772 0.2280
β1 0.0448 0.0098
β2 -14.7778 1.8786
β3 12.9392 1.1050
β4 -0.0004 0.0001
β5 -57.5562 5.2256
β6 -29.0289 1.6189
β7 0.2126 0.0293
β8 -0.0859 0.0198
β9 56.2672 4.4786 (a) initial shape (b) optimized shape

Figure 6. Comparison of blade shapes

Table 3. Coefficients of response surface function

4 Copyright © 2002 by ASME

 Initial Optimized Increment
shape shape (%) 100
Total pressure 2.093 2.057 -1.72
[P0/P0ref]
Total temperature 1.264 1.253 -0.87 80

[T0/T0ref]
Mach no. 0.859 0.855 -0.46
60
Adiabatic 88.8 89.5 0.79

% span
efficiency [%]
40
Table 4. Results of optimization at station 2
Figs. 7-9 compare the computational and experimental
Experiment
results at the initial state and computational results at the 20
Straight
optimized state for the profiles of total pressure, total Skewed

temperature, and adiabatic efficiency at section 2, respectively.

0
At the initial state, the computational profile agrees well with 1.05 1.1 1.15 1.2 1.25 1.3 1.35
Total temperature
experimental profile in each case. The improvement in the
efficiency occurs in the outer part of the blade (50-90 % span). Figure 8. Total temperature profiles at 98% choked
However, in the almost same region, the skew of the blade mass flow
decreases the total pressure and total temperature. Fig. 10
shows that the optimized blade increases the efficiency over the 100
entire mass flow range.
Fig. 11 shows Mach number contours on the plane at 90%
span. The relative Mach number field at 90%span illustrates 80

dramatic changes in the shock pattern. And, velocity drop

across the shock is smaller in the optimized flow field than in
60
the initial flow field.
% span

Figs. 12 and 13 compare the static pressure contours on

the blade surfaces. And, Fig. 14 compares the velocity vectors 40
on suction surface. On the pressure surface, the skew smoothes
out the steep pressure gradient near the leading edge at the tip,
Experiment
which results in the reduction of loss. But, this decreases the 20
Straight
Skewed
pressure rise over the blade in the same region. On the suction
surface of the skewed blade, the location of shock wave is more
0
shifted to the trailing edge as the tip is approached. This also 0.5 0.75
Adiabatic efficiency
1

causes reduction of pressure rise in the outer part of the blade.

Figure 9. Adiabatic efficiency profiles at 98% choked
mass flow
100

94

80 93
Experiment
Adiabatic efficiency (%)

92 Straight
Skewed
91
60
% span

90
89
40 88
87
Experiment 86
20
Straight
Skewed 85
84
0 0.92 0.93 0.94 0.95 0.96 0.97 0.98 0.99 1
1 1.5 2 2.5
Total pressure Mass flow / Choke mass flow

Figure 7. Total pressure profiles at 98% choked mass Figure 10. Efficiency vs mass flow
flow

5 Copyright © 2002 by ASME

 Y Y
Level mach
24 2.000
23 1.943
Z X 22 1.887
Z X
21 1.830
20 1.774
4 19 1.717
3 18 1.661
17 1.604
2 16 1.548
15 1.491
4 14 1.435
5 1
13 1.378
2 12 1.322
11 1.265
6 10 1.209
9 1.152 (a) straight (b) skewed
17 15
5 10 8 1.096
15 7 1.039 Figure 14. Velocity vectors near suction surface
13 6 0.983
15 5 0.926
14 4 0.870
14
3 0.813 CONCLUSION
2 0.757
1 0.700 Three-dimensional shape of a compressor rotor was
numerically optimized by response surface method and
(a) Straight (b) Skewed Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes analysis. By optimizing the
stacking line, which is skewed toward the rotating direction, the
Figure 11. Mach number contours at 90% span adiabatic efficiency, i.e., the objective of the present
optimization, was successfully increased by 0.7%. However, the
Z Z
other properties such as total pressure, total temperature and
absolute Mach number were decreased. By using D-optimal
LE XY XY
design, only fifteen data points were needed to construct the
TE Level p
74 42 100 1.690 response surface. From the results of optimization, it is
63
59 58
45
55 91 1.549 suggested that the response surface method would present
82 1.408
56
73 1.268 reliable and economical solution for design optimization of
62 50
64 1.127
53 61 55 0.986
turbomachinery blade.
52 46 0.845
50 60 60 37 0.705
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7 Copyright © 2002 by ASME