Design Optimization of an Axial Flow Compressor for Industrial Gas Turbine

In recent decade, industry had started to use intensively 3D simulation in compressor flow path and its components design. Designing an Axial Compressor is more an art than science, because one has to vary the parameters by his intuition. Slight variation in one parameter may lead to large variation in another parameter. There are several options to improve the design but it requires enormous time and effort, as each step of designing and analysis is pretty time consuming. Further this design can be optimized with several options available. This paper reports design and optimization of an axial flow compressor, using a uniform approach to solution on theoretical design problems. Preliminary design was carried out for a set of design parameters and tested for stall at different speed and mass flow rate for given pressure ratio. Modeling was performed using 1D and 2D simulations, as the loss parameters were in limits blade modeling was done using blade profiling and 2D analysis. 3D simulation both CFD and FEA were performed. The results of optimized design shown a close agreement with the theoretical design in terms of mass flow rate at given speed for rated pressure ratio with wide stall margin at low losses in less time for limited given input.