The design of gas turbine engines is a complex problem. This complexity has led to the adoption of a modular design approach, in which a conceptual design phase fixes the values for some global parameters and dimensions in order to facilitate the subdivision of the overall task into a number of simpler subproblems. This approach, while making a complex problem more tractable, necessarily has to rely on designer experience and simple evaluations to specify these process-intrinsic constraints at a point in the design process where very little knowledge about the final design exists. Later phases of the design process, using higher-fidelity tools but acting on a limited region of the design space, can only refine an already established design. While substantial improvements in performance have been possible with the current approach, further gains are becoming increasingly hard to achieve. A gas turbine is a complex multidisciplinary system: a more integrated design approach can facilitate a better exploitation of the trade-offs between different modules and disciplines, postponing the setting of these critical interface parameters (such as flow areas, radii, etc.) to a point where more information exists, reducing their impact on the final design. In the resulting large, possibly multimodal, highly constrained design space, and with a large number of objectives to be considered simultaneously, finding an optimal solution by simple trial-and-error can prove extremely difficult. A more intelligent search approach, in which a numerical optimizer takes the place of the human designer in seeking optimal designs, can enable the design space to be explored significantly more effectively, while also yielding a substantial reduction in development times thanks to the automation of the design process. This paper describes the development of a system for the integrated design and optimization of gas turbine engines, linking a metaheuristic optimizer to a geometry modeler and to evaluation tools with different levels of fidelity. In recognition of the substantial increase in design space size required by the integrated approach, an improved parameterization based on the concept of principal components’ analysis was implemented, allowing a rotation of the design space along its most significant directions and a reduction in its dimensionality, proving essential for a faster and more effective exploration of the design space.
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January 2011
Research Papers
An Integrated System for the Aerodynamic Design of Compression Systems—Part I: Development
Tiziano Ghisu,
Tiziano Ghisu
Engineering Design Centre, Department of Engineering,
e-mail: tg269@cam.ac.uk
University of Cambridge
, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire CB2 1PZ, UK
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Geoffrey T. Parks,
Geoffrey T. Parks
Engineering Design Centre, Department of Engineering,
University of Cambridge
, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire CB2 1PZ, UK
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Jerome P. Jarrett,
Jerome P. Jarrett
Engineering Design Centre, Department of Engineering,
University of Cambridge
, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire CB2 1PZ, UK
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P. John Clarkson
P. John Clarkson
Engineering Design Centre, Department of Engineering,
University of Cambridge
, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire CB2 1PZ, UK
Search for other works by this author on:
Tiziano Ghisu
Engineering Design Centre, Department of Engineering,
University of Cambridge
, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire CB2 1PZ, UKe-mail: tg269@cam.ac.uk
Geoffrey T. Parks
Engineering Design Centre, Department of Engineering,
University of Cambridge
, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire CB2 1PZ, UK
Jerome P. Jarrett
Engineering Design Centre, Department of Engineering,
University of Cambridge
, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire CB2 1PZ, UK
P. John Clarkson
Engineering Design Centre, Department of Engineering,
University of Cambridge
, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire CB2 1PZ, UKJ. Turbomach. Jan 2011, 133(1): 011011 (10 pages)
Published Online: September 21, 2010
Article history
Received:
January 10, 2009
Revised:
July 21, 2009
Online:
September 21, 2010
Published:
September 21, 2010
Connected Content
A companion article has been published:
An Integrated System for the Aerodynamic Design of Compression Systems—Part II: Application
Citation
Ghisu, T., Parks, G. T., Jarrett, J. P., and Clarkson, P. J. (September 21, 2010). "An Integrated System for the Aerodynamic Design of Compression Systems—Part I: Development." ASME. J. Turbomach. January 2011; 133(1): 011011. https://doi.org/10.1115/1.4000534
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