Optim Eng (2008) 9: 239255 DOI 10.

1007/s11081-007-9031-1

Aerodynamic optimization of turbomachinery blades using evolutionary methods and ANN-based surrogate models
Temesgen Mengistu Wahid Ghaly

Received: 26 April 2006 / Accepted: 23 October 2007 / Published online: 1 December 2007 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2007

Abstract A fast, exible, and robust simulation-based optimization scheme using an ANN-surrogate model was developed, implemented, and validated. The optimization method uses Genetic Algorithm (GA), which is coupled with an Articial Neural Network (ANN) that uses a back propagation algorithm. The developed optimization scheme was successfully applied to single-point aerodynamic optimization of a transonic turbine stator and multi-point optimization of a NACA65 subsonic compressor rotor in two-dimensional ow, both were represented by 2D linear cascades. High delity CFD ow simulations, which solve the Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes equations, were used in generating the data base used in building the ANN low delity model. The optimization objective is a weighted sum of the performance objectives and is penalized with the constraints; it was constructed so as to achieve a better aerodynamic performance at the design point or over the full operating range by reshaping the blade prole. The latter is represented using NURBS functions, whose coefcients are used as the design variables. Parallelizing the CFD ow simulations reduced the turn-around computation time at close to 100% efciency. The ANN model was able to approximate the objective function rather accurately and to reduce the optimization computing time by ten folds. The chosen objective function and optimization methodology result in a signicant and consistent improvement in blade performance. Keywords Articial neural networks Genetic algorithm Computational uid dynamics Aerodynamic design Global optimization NURBS Response surface approximation
T. Mengistu W. Ghaly ( ) Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada e-mail: ghaly@encs.concordia.ca Present address: T. Mengistu CENAERO, Gosselies, Belgium

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1 Introduction Aerodynamic optimization methods are becoming very attractive in todays competitive environment as they can reduce the design cycle time by automating the design process. Until recently, designers were relying mostly on manual optimization. As Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) matured over the last decade and as computing technology has greatly improved and has become more affordable, simulationbased optimization is becoming affordable and more popular than ever. This is due to the fact that optimization techniques give direct control on performance parameters, even if the computational cost is at least one order of magnitude larger than the cost of an analysis calculation. Aerodynamic shape optimization allows the designer to automate the exploration of the design space to achieve a given objective. One possible design objective is to minimize ow losses, which can be measured by e.g. the total pressure loss (or entropy generation), through proper reshaping of the blade prole. Automated aerodynamic design is accomplished by coupling a CFD ow simulation code with numerical optimization methods. As the aerodynamic shape optimization problem is a complex one with possibly many local minima, gradient-based methods can be trapped in a local optimum, unless the initial guess is close to the global minimum. For this reason, heuristic/evolutionary global algorithms such as Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Simulated Annealing (SA), although more computation intensive compared with gradient-based methods, are used to ensure reaching close to the global minimum. These algorithms have been recently applied in turbomachinery design problems; examples of such algorithms are given in (Dennis et al. 1999; Wang and Damodaran 2000; Oyama et al. 2002). In the work of Dennis et al. (1999), a combination of genetic algorithm and Sequential Quadratic Programming (SQP) algorithms were used to optimize a twodimensional turbine cascade. The GA followed by SQP implementation was introduced to reduce the total number of required function calls, keeping the global exploration behavior of GA. The optimization scheme required from 220 to 675 calls to the ow analysis code. Oyama et al. (2002) worked on 3D blade shape optimization and included the mass ow rate and pressure ratio as constraints in the objective function. The above references represent a sample of aerodynamic cascade optimization, and can be used as a useful tool to design blade cascades however they require large computation resources. The effort now is focused on nding a way of reducing the prohibitive computation time without compromising the solution accuracy. Since aerodynamic design optimization problems are multi-modal and discontinuous in nature, gradient-based numerical optimization algorithms risk of getting trapped in local minima (Lai and Yuan 2002) or run into an infeasible design for which the ow simulation does not converge. Therefore exploratory algorithms such as Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Simulated Annealing (SA) are more appealing for global exploration of the design space however, GA and SA can involve a prohibitively high computational cost where a large number of costly CFD simulations are needed, which makes exploratory algorithms less appealing than gradient-based optimization algorithms (Lai and Yuan 2002).

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In order to avoid this prohibitive cost of GA/SA, a low delity approximation of the objective function, using a Response Surface Approximation (RSA), can be used so as to reduce to a minimum the number of required CFD analyses. Moreover using a RSA can eliminate some of the noise in the objective function as it creates a smooth response surface thereby improving the convergence of the optimization algorithms. Examples of such an approximation are Articial Neural Networks (ANN) and quadratic polynomial response surface models, which have been successfully used in aerodynamic shape optimization as well as in other elds (Pierret et al. 2000). In the present work, an optimization method of the evolutionary type, namely GA, and an approximation method, ANN, are rst presented. They are then implemented in the aerodynamic shape optimization of 2D gas turbine blades. The optimization objective is to improve the blade performance, subject to some constraints, by modifying the blade shape which is approximated using NURBS, whose coefcients are used as the design variables. CFD is used to generate the high delity data set that is used in training and testing the ANN and in validating the optimum prole. The optimization methodology as well as the approximation (ANN) are demonstrated by redesigning a transonic impulse turbine stator and a subsonic axial compressor rotor.

2 The design methodology 2.1 Problem denition and objective function In any optimization problem, the choice of the objective function affects the optimization process as well as the results. Thus a careful and well-studied identication and formulation of that function is crucial. For example, the overall aerodynamic performance of a compressor rotor is determined by its adiabatic efciency, , and/or total pressure loss coefcient, , at design and off-design conditions, therefore one can choose to optimize the efciency or the total pressure loss or both; this can be done either at the design point only or on the full operating range. With this design strategy in mind, the objective function is constructed as a weighted sum of individual objectives and is penalized with the constraints such that it can serve for single point or multi-point optimization, and can be dened as follows:
n n n

Fobj (X) = Min C1

i =0

(1 i ) + C2
i =0 j =0

|j i | + P T

(1)

where stands for either adiabatic efciency, , or (1 ), where is the total pressure loss coefcient. X is the vector of design variables, which include the backpressure and the shape parameters that control the blade prole. Varying the backpressure in the pre-determined range from the choke limit to the stall limit while xing the rotor speed allows for tracing a speed line, i.e. it allows for design and off-design calculations that correspond to different mass ow rates with varying efciency and pressure ratio.

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The rst term in the objective function, (1), attempts to maximize the efciency (or minimize the total pressure loss coefcient) at the design and off-design points, while the second term would eliminate large difference in efciency (or total pressure loss) between the design and off-design points which would tend to keep it constant and optimum over the entire operating range. The last term in the objective function is a Penalty Term (PT ) that accounts for the aerodynamic, mechanical and geometric constraints imposed on the optimization process. The aerodynamic constraints could include the exit ow angle, the spacing to chord ratio, and the stall margin. The summation is carried out over n pre-selected points, these pre-selected points are the design point and off-design points. In this work, two cascade optimization cases were considered in Sect. 5; one of them is a single-point optimization, i.e. n = 1, while the second case is a multi-point optimization where n = 4. The weights Ck , where k = 1, 2, are prescribed by the designer, they are determined such that the different components of the objective function have the desired inuence on the optimization process. Note that the current choice of the objective function, given in (1), allows for different design options depending on the values given to the Ck coefcients: e.g., single or multi-point optimization for maximum efciency or minimum total pressure loss. 2.2 NURBS representation The geometric representation of the proles is an important part in the aerodynamic shape optimization procedure. The parameters in the geometric representation of the blades are used as design variables in the aerodynamic optimization process. At present, the geometry is parameterized using Non-Uniform Rational B-splines (NURBS). A clear advantage of using NURBS is that one can adjust the prole locally on specic regions of the blade, by modifying the weights and/or the x- and y-coordinates of the NURBS control points, without necessarily affecting the whole blade prole. The NURBS denition and formulation are very well described in (Piegl and Tiller 1995). An accurate geometric representation of 2D turbomachinery cascades was obtained using NURBS with a minimum possible number of control points ranging from 9 to 19 depending on the type of blade cascade, see (Ghaly and Mengistu 2003) for more detail. In the present work, the blade prole was dened by the mean camber line and a thickness distribution; each of which was parameterized by a NURBS function with a number of control points ranging from nine to eleven. The position of these control points and the weights can be taken as the design variables in the optimization process, see the results given in Sect. 5. 2.3 Flow simulation method The two-dimensional turbulent transonic ow in a linear cascade is simulated using a second-order accurate cell-vertex nite volume space discretization method on an unstructured triangular mesh. The steady state solution is reached by pseudo-time marching the Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations using an explicit ve-stage

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Runge-Kutta scheme. Local time stepping and implicit residual smoothing were used to accelerate the convergence. A non-linear blend of second and fourth order articial viscosity was used in capturing shocks and eliminating pressure-velocity decoupling with minimal numerical diffusion. The method of characteristics was used to impose inow and outow boundary conditions. Turbulence is modeled using the BaldwinLomax model in the discretization of the Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations (Daneshkhah 2006). The ow at the inlet and exit planes, which are placed at about one chord upstream and downstream of the cascade, is subsonic. The boundary conditions at inlet are given by the total pressure, total temperature and the tangential velocity. At the exit plane, the ratio of exit static to inlet total pressure (referred to as the backpressure) is specied. This set of boundary conditions allows for computing the ow at any point on a given speed line. The latter is characterized by a xed rotor angular speed, which is represented by a xed tangential velocity in the rotor relative frame and varying the backpressure will result in changing the mass ow rate and the pressure ratio across the rotor, hence will allow for moving along the speed line.

3 Optimization algorithm and surrogate model The aerodynamic shape optimization problem is reduced to solving a constrained optimization problem, which is transformed into an unconstrained one by penalizing the objective function with the constraints. The optimization problem is solved using Genetic Algorithm (GA) and is coupled with an Articial Neural Network, as a surrogate model, to reduce the optimization computing time. Both GA and ANN are described in this section. 3.1 Genetic algorithm Genetic algorithms are general-purpose search algorithms based upon the principles of evolution observed in nature. Genetic algorithms combine selection, crossover, mutation, and elitism operators with the goal of nding the best solution to a problem. They search for this optimal solution until a specied termination criterion is met (Goldberg 1985; Gen and Cheng 1997). In the present work, the variables for the GA algorithm are real coded, where an individual is characterized by a vector of real numbers. Two kinds of crossover operations are included in the real-coded GA developed in this work namely, arithmetic and heuristic crossover operators. Arithmetic crossover operator combines linearly two parent chromosome vectors to produce two new offsprings while heuristic crossover operator uses the tness values of the two parent chromosomes to determine the search direction and creates the new offsprings. In addition GA is naturally a population-based parallel algorithm that is best suited in a parallel computation algorithm. A population of 32 individuals with a crossover probability of 0.80, mutation probability of 0.15 and elitism of 2 has been used for each generation. The implementation of GA is detailed in (Mengistu and Ghaly 2003).

244 Table 1 GA validation Test case Rastrigin Function Present work: 40 design variables (Deb and Joshi 2002): 20 design variables (Fogel and Beyer 1995): 30 design variables Welded-beam: 4 design variables and 5 constraints Present work (Ray and Liew 2003) (Reklaitis et al. 1983) Speed-reducer: 7 design variables and 11 constraints Present work (Luo 2004) (Ray and Liew 2003)

T. Mengistu, W. Ghaly

Global minimum

1014 between 10 and 20 greater than 10

2.197 2.3809 2.38116

2994.36 2994.36 2994.47

3.1.1 GA validation The GA developed and used in this work was validated using the Rastrigin function (Deb and Joshi 2002), the welded-beam problem and the speed reducer problem (Ray and Liew 2003). These test functions vary in difculty, in number of local minima, and in number of design variables X and constraints. They have a global extremum that is hidden among many local extrema. The search range that was chosen for each function includes several local minima. The Rastrigin function was tested with forty design variables, xi , that are dened in the range 100.12. Table 1 gives a summary of the results obtained for the three test problems. The welded beam problem is about the design of a welded beam for minimum cost and maximum rigidity when it must carry a certain load. The problem is described and solved by several authors to test optimization algorithms for engineering problems (Reklaitis et al. 1983; Deb 2001; Ray and Liew 2003) who reported different results at different times; which implies that the problem has several local optima and needs to be solved for the global optimum. The GA implemented in this work found an optimum cost of 2.197, satisfying all constraints. Table 1 summarizes the comparison of the results with the literature mentioned above. The speed reducer problem is another engineering problem that was investigated by several authors for example, Rao (1996), Deb (2001), Ray (2003), Luo (2004). The objective of this problem is to nd the minimum weight, subject to 11 constraints. There are seven design variables. The best-known feasible solution to this problem is 2994.36. The GA implemented in the present work has found exactly the same optimum solution with all constraints satised. Table 1 compares the literature results with the result obtained by the GA developed in the present work.

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Fig. 1 A typical neural networks architecture

3.2 Articial neural networks ANN is used as a low order RSA to approximate the objective function at a relatively low computing cost and results in reducing the computing effort by a factor of ten. A set of test cases is generated using the high delity CFD simulations and is used in training and testing the ANN model, the latter is then used in the aerodynamic optimization. The present model is composed of a multi-layer feed-forward network with backpropagation. It is composed of three layers, an input layer, one hidden layer having 41 nodes and an output layer, see Fig. 1. A sigmoid function is taken as the transfer function between the nodes, and the weights in each connection in the network are arbitrarily initialized to one. They are updated using an optimization algorithm to minimize the error between the network output and the given training data set output. The training strategy is enhanced using genetic algorithm and simulated annealing algorithm in the initial stage of the training which is then followed by a gradientbased method (Mengistu 2005). Results of the training and testing of this ANN model for the aerodynamic optimization problem is given in the context of optimizing the NACA compressor presented in the results section, see Fig. 10.

4 Numerical implementation The aerodynamic design optimization involves four basic components: shape parameterization using NURBS, numerical optimization using GA, response surface approximation using ANN for the low delity calculation of the objective functions

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and constraints and ow simulation using Reynolds Average Navier-Stokes solver (RANS) for the high delity calculation of the objective functions and constraints. The ow of calculations and information involved in building the ANN model and in carrying out the aerodynamic design optimization is displayed in Fig. 2. As the ANN training and testing requires a pool of high delity ow simulations that are obtained by solving the RANS equations, parallel computations have been implemented when producing these ow simulations. This parallelization, which is 100% efcient, results in reducing the wall clock time required for optimization by a factor that is equal to the number of processors used. Moreover, response surface approximation used to evaluate the objectives and constraints, required negligible time. The construction of the response surface needed a database of ow solutions, which was obtained using high-delity ow simulation. The overall computation time includes the selection of blade geometry candidates, generation of CFD solution for the candidates, post-processing the solution, building the database for response surface approximation, ANN training (Response surface model construction) and optimization process using ANN. 75% of the total development time is taken by the CFD solver while building the ANN response surface takes about 17% of the time, but it should be emphasized that selection of blade geometry candidates must be done with utmost care so that the database contains feasible blade proles, that cover reasonably well the design space, this requires about 7% of the time. All the rest including the aerodynamic optimization takes 1% of the development time.

Fig. 2 The ANN-based aerodynamic design optimization process

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5 Results and discussion In this section, two design cases are presented. The rst case given in Sect. 5.1 is intended to assess the aerodynamic optimization process while the second case is intended to assess the ANN-based aerodynamic optimization. 5.1 Redesign of a transonic impulse turbine cascade An impulse turbine cascade is redesigned to minimize the total pressure loss coefcient at a given operating point. For this cascade, the spacing to chord ratio is 0.526; the camber and thickness distributions assume a parabolic prole with maximum thickness to chord ratio of 21.45% and maximum camber to chord ratio of 21.45%, both occurring at mid-chord. The inlet ow angle is 40.63 and the ratio of exit static to inlet total pressure is 0.833. The ow is assumed inviscid and is simulated by solving the Euler equations, which are a subset of the RANS equations described in Sect. 2.3. Figure 3 shows a ow chart of the aerodynamic optimization process. The objective function for this case is given by: + K2 ( )] Fobj (X) = Min[ + K1 ( m) (2)

where Fobj is the objective function, X is the vector of design variables, is the total pressure loss coefcient, m and are the difference between the computed and the target mass ow rates and exit ow angles (in degree). The weights K1 and K2 are user-specied penalty coefcients; they are chosen so as to have equal penalizing effect on the objective function. In this case, they take the following values: | > 0.01, and 0 otherwise, K1 = 1000 when | m K2 = 10 when | | > 1 , and 0 otherwise. (3)

The ow over this blade is transonic, where a shock is present on the blade suction side. To reduce the total pressure loss, this shock should be weakened or eliminated, which can be accomplished by reshaping the blade prole. The latter is described

Fig. 3 The aerodynamic optimization process

248 Fig. 4 Convergence history for the impulse turbine cascade

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by its camber line and its tangential thickness distribution, each is represented by NURBS with 9 control points and weights; the control points and the corresponding weights are determined as described in (Ghaly and Mengistu 2003). In this case, the thickness distribution is xed and the camber line is allowed to change. Hence the design variables are taken to be the y-coordinates of the control points and the corresponding weights along the camber line except those at the leading edge point; this implies a total of 16 design variables. The y-coordinates of the control points are allowed to vary from the original prole by 15%, and the weights vary between 0.5 and 2.5; these ranges ensure a good coverage of the design space. The optimization history is given in Fig. 4 where the best candidate in each GA generation is given. The total pressure loss is reduced from 0.0043 to 0.0026 in ve generations; each generation consists of 32 individuals. A single ow eld analysis took approximately two minutes of CPU time (when starting from a converged solution obtained for a given candidate of the previous generation) with a CFL number of 4 on a mesh with 2800 points. Figure 5 shows that the changes in shape between the original and the redesigned blades are relatively small, which would be difcult to achieve by manually changing the blade shape. However, the normal shock prevailing in the original blade around mid chord has been eliminated in the redesigned blade, as can be seen in Figs. 6 and 7 that show the Mach number contours and the Mach number distribution along the original and redesigned blades. Note that the optimal design has a reversed curvature particularly along the suction side to allow the ow to compress reversibly. Other researchers (Ahmadi and Ghaly 1998; Dang 1995) have also observed similar behavior. 5.2 NACA 65 subsonic compressor rotor The optimization algorithm and the surrogate model presented earlier, were used to redesign a well-documented subsonic compressor rotor (Emery et al. 1958) for best sustained efciency over the full operating speed line; this is accomplished by modifying the rotor blade prole. The original prole is that of a NACA 65 airfoil and the

Aerodynamic optimization of turbomachinery blades Fig. 5 The impulse turbine cascade

249

Fig. 6 Isentropic Mach contours

ow is assumed to be turbulent, the Reynolds number being 2.45 105 . The performance measure that is included in the objective function, given in (1), is taken to be the adiabatic efciency, , and the weights C1 and C2 are set to 1 and 0.5, respectively. The Penalty Terms (PT) appearing in (1) include the optimization constraints, namely the reduced mass ow rate, the inlet and exit ow angles, while the remaining constraints are satised exactly through the imposition of the inlet and outlet ow boundary conditions for the CFD ow simulation. The original blade prole is dened in terms of a mean camber line and a thickness distribution, both are parameterized using NURBS with 11 and 9 control points, respectively. The design variables controlling the blade shape are taken to be the ycoordinates of the camber line prole and the thickness distribution, excluding the thickness at the LE and TE points and the camber line point at the LE, which gives

250 Fig. 7 Isentropic Mach along the blade

T. Mengistu, W. Ghaly

a total of 17 geometric design parameters. The weights and the x-coordinates of the control points are xed during the optimization. The family of airfoils used in training and testing the ANN was obtained by perturbing the above 17 geometric design parameters in a preset range and, to ensure a homogeneous representation of the design space, the candidate airfoils were selected based on the Latin-Hypercube space-lling experiments (McKay et al. 1979). To account for the full range of the operating speed line, the ow was simulated at 4 values of backpressure that include the two limiting points namely the stall and choke points, and two other points. The ANN response surface model was constructed using a family of 50 blade proles, 35 of these proles were used in training the ANN model and 15 were used in testing it. For each of these prole, the ow was simulated at 4 values of backpressure, thus the total number of CFD runs amounted to 200 simulations that covered a reasonably large range of the design space, as can be seen in Figs. 8 and 9. The CFD ow simulations were carried out in parallel (one CFD simulation per node) on four nodes of an SGI 2000 server using Message Passing Interface (MPI), which required about 60 hours of wall-clock time. The ANN model was constructed with one hidden layer containing 41 nodes, the input layer with 18 design parameters and the output layer with 4 output variables (efciency, reduced mass ow rate, inlet ow angle and exit ow angle) used in computing the individual terms appearing in the objective function, see (1). The ANN training took about ve hours on a Pentium IV PC; the errors in the ANN training and testing are given in Fig. 10. The errors in the ANN approximation are given in more detail in Fig. 11 which shows that these errors are less than 2% for about 45% of the test set. Unfortunately, there is no rule for determining the number of nodes in the hidden layer. However, a good initial guess is the average of the number of input and output nodes. This number is then increased to create an optimum-trained network. If the number of nodes in the hidden layer is too small undertting occurs, where high training error and high generalization error occur. If the number of hidden layer nodes is too large overtting occurs, where low training error but high generalization error occurs.

Aerodynamic optimization of turbomachinery blades Fig. 8 The range of geometry explored for the design space

251

Fig. 9 Speed lines of blade proles used in training/testing the ANN

Figure 9 also shows that the optimal blade is 4% more efcient than the original one. Moreover, the optimum blade shows a better performance in terms of pressure ratio (although the latter is not part of the optimization function) over the full range of operation; this behavior was also observed by Oyama et al. (2002). Figure 12 shows that the optimized blade camber has signicantly changed near the trailing edge, and the maximum thickness has increased by 3.7% and has slightly moved downstream. The high camber near the trailing edge resulted in a higher ow turning at the cost of an increase in prole loss. Figures 13 and 14, where the efciency is plotted vs. mass ow rate and vs. pressure ratio, show a 7% improvement in efciency and about 1% increase in total pressure ratio for the same blade speed and mass ow rate.

252 Fig. 10 The convergence history of ANN training/testing

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Fig. 11 The ANN model validation

The performance of the optimal rotor blade, which is given in Figs. 13, 14 and 15, was evaluated by simulating the ow over the redesigned compressor blade at values of backpressure that are different from those used in generating the surrogate model. The fact that the performance of the optimal blade is smooth over the full operating range reects the robustness and the validity of the optimization strategy, and the accuracy of the surrogate model.

6 Conclusion A fast, exible, and robust simulation-based optimization scheme using an ANNsurrogate model was developed, implemented and used in the aerodynamic shape optimization of turbomachinery blade cascades in two-dimensional ow. The optimization method uses Genetic Algorithm (GA) and is combined with an Articial Neural Network (ANN) that uses a back propagation algorithm. GA was validated

Aerodynamic optimization of turbomachinery blades Fig. 12 The original and optimized blade proles

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Fig. 13 Efciency vs. mass ow rate for the NACA 65 subsonic compressor (Points 1, 3, 5, and 7 correspond to preselected backpressure used in the optimization while the others are not)

against benchmark cases and ANN was assessed for aerodynamic shape optimization. The ANN-surrogate model, used in building a low delity model to approximate the optimization objective and constraints, was found to reduce the computing time by a factor of ten. The developed optimization scheme was successfully applied to single-point optimization of transonic inviscid ow in an impulse turbine where the simulation-based optimization scheme was assessed (ANN was not used); it was also applied to multipoint optimization of turbulent ow in a NACA65 compressor where the ANN-based optimization scheme was assessed. The choice of objective function and constraints was found to be crucial for the success of the optimization process particularly for

254 Fig. 14 Efciency vs. pressure ratio for the NACA 65 subsonic compressor (Points 1, 3, 5, and 7 correspond to preselected backpressure used in the optimization while the others are not)

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Fig. 15 Pressure ratio vs. mass ow rate for the NACA 65 subsonic compressor (Points 1, 3, 5, and 7 correspond to preselected backpressure used in the optimization while the others are not)

the multi-point optimization case; it was constructed so as to achieve a better aerodynamic performance over the full operating range by reshaping the blade prole. The test cases that were presented showed that the developed optimization algorithm is general and capable of handling various aerodynamic design objectives and constraints. They also showed that the present methodology was able to reach the optimization objective of improving the blade performance over the full operating range while simultaneously satisfying the design constraints.

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