Multi-Disciplinary Design Optimization of an Axial Turbine

Stage of Aircraft Auxiliary Power Unit

G.B. Ashakiran1
M. S. Ramaiah School of Advanced Studies, Bangalore 560017, India

A. Gogoi2
ADA, PB No1718, Vimanapura Post, Bangalore 560 017, India

and

Q.H. Nagpurwala3
M. S. Ramaiah School of Advanced Studies, Bangalore 560017, India

Abstract
The next generation design of small gas turbines outshines the present capabilities in terms of improved
aerodynamics, superior technologies and high reliability to ensure air superiority and survivability. Auxiliary Power
Units (APUs) are such small gas turbines that provide many benefits to the modern military aircrafts. The
performance of each individual component of an APU is therefore significant. Efforts have been made by many
researchers through experimental and computational means for the improvement in performance in each of the
components of an APU, and especially that of a turbine stages. The design of a turbine stage that produces high
performance is therefore essential to meet the specific requirements of APU.
This Paper presents design and analysis of a high performance axial turbine stage for an Auxiliary Power Unit.
Preliminary free vortex based design, CFD analysis and mechanical analysis were carried out in an iterative manner
and optimisation processes were incorporated at each step of detail design process. A preliminary design code was
also developed in the course of the present work. The Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software tool,
NUMECA, was validated by comparing the computational results with the experimental data of the Aachen turbine.
Appropriate computational grid for the full turbine stage with desirable features like orthogonality, clustering,
smoothness, etc was used and the CFD simulations were carried out using the Spalart Allmaras [1] turbulence
model and the central difference scheme of Jameson [2].
The results from the computational study were in excellent agreement with the preliminary design values and
the turbine stage produced impressive efficiency even at lower specific speeds. Effects of various parameters, like
tip clearance and blade stagger, which could not be addressed in the preliminary design, were studied through CFD
analysis and optimum values of these parameters were obtained. The off-design performance evaluation was also
carried out through CFD simulation and the results were compared with available loss modelling procedure[3,4].
The design was also checked for mechanical integrity in terms of stress levels in the blisk using ANSYS. The blisk
was found safe even with 15% overspeed to meet the specifications as per military standards.
Key Words: High Performance, Design Space, Artificial Neural Network, Multi-grid, Weight Optimization

1
Student, M.Sc. (Engg.), Rotating Machinery Design, MSRSAS
2
Scientist, Propulsion System, Aeronautical Development Agency
3
Professor, Centre for Rotating Machinery Design, MSRSAS

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Nomenclature use of a number of guidelines and correlations as they
2 form the essential features of the overall design
A = Cross-sectional area, mm exercise of a turbomachine. They are now built
C = Secondary loss coefficient around more versatile FEA and CFD computational
D = Diameter, m tools that can reduce experimental lead time and
H = Enthalpy, kJ/kg operate at much lower costs.
N = Rotational speed, rpm
T = Temperature, K Problem Description: Small gas turbines have gone
U = Blade speed, m/s through large changes since 1950s. The evolution of
V = Absolute velocity, m/s small gas turbines has been primarily driven by the
Y = Blade loss coefficient influence of military requirements, as there was a
c = Blade chord, mm need for something better than piston engines.
h = Blade height, mm Due to smaller and lighter gas turbine engines, it
s = Blade space, mm has been possible to achieve higher operating
t = Blade thickness, mm pressures and temperatures in the core components.
α = Flow angle, radians The credit also goes to new concepts and processes
β = Blade angle, radians that have given unique solutions at lower life cycle
cost and for higher life of the components without
Abbreviations deteriorating their performance.
APU = Auxiliary Power Unit
The current design requirement of an axial turbine
AI = Artificial Intelligence
stage is based upon the potential future application in
ANN = Artificial Neural Network
a high performance small turbo-shaft engine, e.g. an
CFD = Computational Fluid Dynamics
APU. The primary objective here was to design an
FEA = Finite Element Analysis
un-cooled turbine stage having maximum
GGT = Gas Generator Turbine
aerodynamic performance while operating within the
GTS = Gas Turbine Starter
limits of aerodynamic and mechanical constraints.
HCF = High Cycle Fatigue
NGV = Nozzle Guide Vane
MIL = Military Standards II. Preliminary and Detail Design
TIT = Turbine Inlet Temperature The axial flow turbine stage design began with an
l-D mean-line preliminary design calculation. A
I. Introduction spreadsheet was developed to execute the design
iterations, keeping the maximum performance goal of
G as turbines are typical power sources used in a
wide range of sizes for propulsion and power
the APU program. A number of design iterations
were carried out by varying the rotor mean speed and
generation systems. Recently, there has been
exit swirl angle. The findings of the preliminary
considerable interest shown in the development and
design study showed that the parameters which
application of small gas turbines to extort high power
improved the aerodynamic performance, tended to
density at lower costs. However, resulting from the
degrade the mechanical integrity of the turbine and
smaller size, their efficiency, pressure ratio and
vice versa. A ‘design space’ was therefore generated
specific work are mostly lower than those of the large
considering the acceptable aerodynamic and
scale systems. Therefore, more detailed studies are
mechanical limits, as shown in Figure 1.
required to effectively enhance their performance.
The designs in the lower left section of the
The design of a small gas turbine engine is a
acceptable region had the lowest mechanical risk in
fairly lengthy and complex process, involving many
terms of tip speed, whereas designs in the upper right
engineering disciplines, like material sciences, heat-
corner had the highest aerodynamic performance but
transfer, thermo-fluids, turbomachinery design,
with higher mechanical risks. Keeping in view the
testing for validation and finally the airworthiness for
maximum performance goal, a design point ‘P’ was
certification. Since all the above fields are employed
chosen with a rotor blade speed of 380 m/s and an
while designing an appropriate engine configuration,
exit swirl angle of 20°, which showed a reaction of
it requires several months, and sometimes years, of
45% at mean. It was observed that increasing the
detailed analyses and testing.
swirl angle beyond 20° caused the downstream free
The turbine design process can be broadly power turbine stage to suffer, where as reducing the
classified as preliminary design and detail design exit swirl angle, led to a lower reaction at mean.
process. Each step in these design processes makes Also, increasing the mean blade speed beyond 380

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m/s was not found feasible due to the mechanical reaction, whereas the mechanical constraints were
limitations. In the present scenario, the performance evaluated in terms of blade tip speed, disc stresses
was measured in terms of efficiency and stage and vibration levels.

Figure 1 Design space under Aeromechanical constraints

The specific speed from the thermodynamic design absolute velocities at the rotor inlet were found to be
iterations was found to be 0.760, which is lower than 266 m/s and 580 m/s respectively. After estimating
the cut-off speed of 0.776 [5]. The design was still the velocities and blade angles at mean, hub and tip
opted corresponding to point ‘P’, considering the sections, the blade profiles for the stator and the rotor
advantages of axial turbines over radial turbines in were generated in NUMECA environment. These
terms of overall diameter and weight. profiles were stacked radially to get 3-D blade
models.
Additionally, the mechanical limitations were also
imposed in terms of the product AN2 considering the
creep life limitations on the blades [5]
Allowable AN2 = 20x106 rpm2 m2
Designed AN2 = 12.5x106 rpm2 m2
The design iterations showed that a rotor of 160
mm diameter was required for delivering a mass flow
rate of 1.896 kg/s at a rotational speed of 52000 rpm.
The tip speed was limited to 440 m/s based on
mechanical integrity. Considering the axial inlet
Mach number for the design as 0.4, the minimum
blade height required for this design was estimated to
be 21 mm.
Results obtained from the 1-D meanline
preliminary design were used for the 2-D and 3-D Figure 2 Velocity Triangles for Stator and Rotor
detailed designs. The velocity triangles were Blades at Mean Line
constructed to determine the flow angles (and blade
Selecting the shape of the flow path is one of the
angles) and velocities at the rotor and stator ends.
critical steps in the detailed design phase, as it not
Free vortex design was used to determine the flow
only defines the shape of the blade in the meridional
velocities along the blade span. Figure 2 shows the
view but also impacts on the flow characteristics and
velocity triangle at meanline. The relative and
the axial length of the turbine. The axial length, for

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instance, was fixed at 4.75 mm, which was 25 % of
the upstream axial chord. Upon fixing the axial
length, the incline angle was adjusted to smoothen
the flow path by fitting a spline curve as shown in the
Figure 3, thereby improving the performance. It was
found that as the incline angle increased, the nozzle
blades became too short, making them difficult to
manufacture.
Though a detailed understanding of the flow
conditions enables the designer to optimise the blade
profiles for a given flow condition, testing of a
number of profiles and CFD iterations are required to
arrive at the optimal profile. For instance, the profile
that showed an improved performance than the
former base profile is shown in Figure 4. Dotted lines
indicate the preliminary or base profile.

Figure 3 Flow path smoothening

III. Model Construction and Solution
The design of turbo-machinery blading is a
cumbersome process, in which a number of targets Figure 4 Comparison of base profile and
have to be met. The process of generating the blade optimised profiles for rotor
geometry can be divided into two parts. The first part
This method of blade generation involved testing a
is choosing a basic blade shape, e.g. a conventional
number of blade profiles and necessitated CFD runs
blade profile, and imposing design parameters and
at each step to assess the performance. There existed
carrying out CFD analyses in order to achieve the
a number of probabilities of the profile parameters
design targets evolved from the preliminary design
and the time investment became a major factor of
calculations. The second part is to optimise the blade
concern. So, there was an urge for a better method,
profile by state of art approach. One of the methods
which would give optimised profile parameters in a
of optimisation is employing the Artificial Neural
shorter time. Pierret and Braembussche [6] have
Network (ANN) approach.
described the implementation of Artificial
The preliminary and detailed design resulted in 24 Intelligence in the blade generation process.
nozzle vanes with aspect ratio of 0.65, a turning angle Therefore, a two layered multi-input and multi-output
of 62° and subsonic exit Mach number at the vane Artificial Neural Network (ANN) was developed,
mean section, corresponding to an isentropic nozzle trained and implemented for the future runs, as
pressure ratio of 1.55. Similarly the rotor required 27 shown in Figure 5. The use of ANN gave a genuine
blades. It was designed for sub impulse conditions at idea of the turbine performance without running CFD
the blade root, with a resultant large flow turning of computations.
65° and a high inlet relative Mach number. The
thickness distribution being one of the important
criteria in blade design, the position of maximum
thickness was chosen at 36% of blade chord for both
rotor and stator. The dimensions of the leading and
trailing edges were chosen 1mm and 0.8 mm
respectively, allowing for the feasibility in
manufacturing and also considering aerodynamic
stability and blade vibrations. The smoothness of the
profile was given more significance to avoid
difficulties in CFD simulations. The stagger angles of
35° and 40° were imposed at the mean sections of
rotor and stator respectively after iterative studies.
Using these data, the blade profiles were generated in Figure 5 Two layered ANN for blade profile
NUMECA Environment. optimisation [6]

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 The inputs for the ANN were a set of geometric
and aerodynamic parameters of the blade, like
lengths between control points, stagger angle, throat
area and mass flow rate. The summation used
sigmoid functions of values varying between 0 and 1.
Figure 6 Three dimensional solid model of rotor
Upon finalising the 2-D blade profiles, a 3-D
geometry was generated for the stator vanes and the
rotor blades. Later, the blisk was also modelled for
FE analysis. Figure 6 shows a 3-D model of the rotor.
Grid Generation
The grid generation in NUMECA Autogrid is
automated for turbomachinery blades and hence
requires a minimum number of inputs from the user.
Grid was generated individually for the NGV and the
rotor and the two grids were merged in IGG as shown
in Figure 7.
Figure 7 Multi block grid generation showing
rotor and stator interface
First stage nozzle guide vanes of the gas generator
turbine are subjected to both aerodynamic and
thermal loads in spite of their smaller dimensions. A
multi-block grid was chosen to ensure adaptivity in
such fields. Multi-block grid provided the freedom of
selecting the number of nodes on the profile as the
flow was subsonic and there was no problem of
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shocks in the trailing edge region. For accuracy,
many nodes were taken in the streamwise direction to
capture the flow physics at the trailing edge.
For meshing of rotor passages, the computational
domain was divided into sub-domains, like blade and
tip clearance regions, and each of these supported a
structured grid as shown in Figure 8. The approach
chosen to generate the grid for a rotor with tip
clearance was similar to the one generated for stators.
A radially stacked mesh, formed by 2-D multi-block
grid surfaces, extended from hub to shroud, thus
leaving a gap in the tip clearance region. The grid
lines were clustered towards hub and the casing to
capture the end wall boundary layers correctly.
Figure 8 Multi block grid showing tip clearance
The gap left in the O mesh between the blade tip
and the shroud was divided into two sub-domains
formed by an O mesh and an inner H mesh. Both the
sub-domains extended radially equidistant and got
stacked from the blade tip to the casing.
Only the surface corresponding to the blade tip and
the one corresponding to the shroud coincided with
the outer grid surfaces with matching grid nodes. The
total number of grid points was equal to 731958 and
comprised 6 blocks. The entire grid could therefore
be divided into I*J*K distribution, as shown in Table
1.
Table 1 Grid Description
Block Grid
Size (i*j*k) Description
No. Type
1 33*41*217 Stator Blade O-H
2 49*41*33 NGV Inlet H-H
3 33*41*209 Rotor Blade O-H
4 33*41*49 Rotor Outlet H-H
5 9*9*161 Tip Clearance O-H
6 17*9*65 Tip Clearance H-H
 In order to describe the flow physics accurately and
to obtain good quality numerical results, special care
must be paid to the treatment of the boundary
conditions. The following were the boundary
conditions imposed on the axial turbine stage:
The stage inlet flow angle was set to zero. The total
temperature and total pressure values were 1200 K
and 583188 Pa respectively. A radial equilibrium
back pressure of 210000 Pa was imposed at the exit.
Air was considered as the real gas and the values of
Cp and specific heat ratio were taken as 1160 J/kg/K
and 1.32 respectively at a temperature of 1200 K.
The one equation Spalart-Allmaras turbulence
model was used in all the computations and the
equations were solved by central difference scheme.
The hub wall of the rotor was given rotation along
with the blade while the NGV hub and entire shroud
were stationery. Implicit Residual Smoothening and
Multi-Grid Acceleration were used for convergence
acceleration of the solution.
IV. Validation Study
The validation of the numerical simulation
procedure was performed by analysing the Aachen
1.5 stage turbine [7] and comparing the NUMECA
results with the published experimental values and
those from other turbo-machinery codes.
The inlet total pressure and outlet total pressure
were 166871 Pa and 112500 Pa respectively, with a
rotor speed of 3500 rpm. The grid was generated
taking 4 blocks with 890124 points and radial
equilibrium boundary conditions were imposed at the
outlet. The Jameson-Schmidt-Turkel [4] scheme and
the one equation Spalart Allmaras [5] turbulence
model were used for computations.
Figure 9 circumferentially averaged total pr. plot
at the rotor exit for NUMECA and other codes [7]
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The results obtained from NUMECA software
were compared with those obtained from ‘TFLO’,
United Technologies’ solver ‘3D FLOW’,
NASA/GE’s solver ‘APNASA-V5’ and the
experimental data. The circumferentially averaged
total pressure, total temperature and absolute flow
angle at the rotor exit, 8 mm downstream of the
trailing edge of the NGV and rotor, were considered
for comparison.
Figure 9 shows the circumferentially averaged total
pressure for the rotor. The predicted results are in
good agreement with the experimental values and
with the results from other codes like TFLO,
APNASA V5 and 3 D Flow.
V. CFD Analysis
CFD analyses were then carried out on the
designed turbine stage for the optimum point ‘P’ on
the design space. At the design point, a mass flow
rate of 1.96 kg/s at an adiabatic efficiency of 90%
was obtained for an expansion ratio of 2.34. The
turbine stage generated a torque of 82.92 N-m and a
power output of 440 kW, which was adequate to
drive the 6:1 pressure ratio centrifugal compressor.
The results of the CFD analysis at the design point
are discussed in the following sections:
A) Static pressure: A smooth drop of static pressure
was observed at the mean section. At the hub and the
tip sections, a modest flow deceleration was observed
on the suction surface as shown in Figure 10 and
11(a). Figure 10 shows the static pressure variation
for the baseline and improved profiles that involved
several CFD iterations (refer Figure 4 also).
Figure 10 Static pressure variations with axial
distance for base profile and optimised profile.
B) Total pressure: As expected, the drop in total
pressure was seen mainly in the rotor section where
as the losses due to boundary layer occurred both in
the nozzle guide vanes and the rotor blade passages
as shown in Figure 11 (b). The total pressure
recovery for the nozzle was around 96 to 97 %. A
further improvement in pressure recovery of up to
98-99% can be obtained in the nozzle through
extensive CFD experiments.
C) Mach number: Smooth flow acceleration was
observed towards exit of the rotor and stator
passages. Though the pockets of local acceleration
were observed on the suction side of the blade, they
did not lead to any shock as shown in Figure 11 (c).
Again, since the flow is subsonic at the nozzle hub,
the passage did not get choked.
D) Entropy: Production of entropy in the free stream
flow was found negligible but there was considerable
entropy production at the hub and the tip sections as
shown in Figure 11 (d). The entropy production at
the hub could be attributed to the random flow near
casing and the entropy in the tip was mainly due to
tip clearance vortex.
Figure 11 Contour plots (a) Static pressure (b)
Total pressure (c) Relative Mach number (d)
Entropy
E) Parametric studies: The blade stagger angle and
the tip clearance are the two parameters that were
studied for their effects on the turbine performance.
The first test parameter was the stagger angle,
especially that of the nozzle. The stagger angle was
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varied between 35° and 45°. The second parameter,
i.e. the tip clearance was varied over three different
values, viz. 0.5%, 1% and 1.5% of the blade span and
its effect was evaluated with respect to the
performance characteristics of the turbine stage.
The problem associated with the re-staggering
process was the reduction in throat area that led to
choking of the flow passage. Studies were carried out
to evaluate the turbine performance for higher stagger
angles without altering the throat area. The CFD
studies were executed with stagger angle of 35°, 40°
and 45° at a constant N /√T value of 1530.
Figure 12 shows the variation in efficiency with
change in stagger angle at a constant blade speed. As
expected, the performance improved in terms of
efficiency as the stagger was increased from 35° to
40°. But some interesting results were obtained when
the stagger was further increased to 45°. It was found
that the efficiency was tending to decrease with an
increase in stagger beyond 40° at meanline. This
could be attributed to the fact that even a small
change in throat area can lead to mass flow variations
across the turbine stage.
Figure 12 Performance variations with stagger
angle for the rotor blisk
In order to assess the performance of the turbine
stage for varied rotor tip clearances, studies were also
conducted with tip clearances of 0.1 mm, 0.15 mm,
0.2 mm and 0.25 mm. Figure 13 shows the variation
of turbine stage efficiency with blade tip clearance at
the design speed, N /√T = 1530. It is observed that
the efficiency variation is non linear with an overall
efficiency reduction of 1.93 % for a difference in tip
gap of only a 0.15 mm. It can also be observed that
the mass flow rate increases as the blockage reduces
with the increase in clearance.
The change in the vane stagger contributes only to
a limited extent to the efficiency variation. The
dominating effect is the flow across the blade tip and
the vortices associated with it. This is because the
losses due to the tip leakage flow are not restricted to
the immediate vicinity of the blade tip but spread
radially inwards with increasing tip clearance,
covering nearly 25% of the blade span. This becomes
evident from Figure 13, which shows the variation of
efficiency and hence performance distribution.
Figure 13 Performance variations with tip
clearance
These results show the necessity of careful end
wall and rotor design for an axial turbine stage
F) Off-Design studies: The influence of off-design
condition on turbine stage efficiency can be seen
from Figure 14, where the relative isentropic
efficiency is plotted as a function of stage total
pressure ratio. The process of performance plot
generation involved varying the back pressure in
arbitrary steps for a fixed turbine speed of 52000 rpm
and executing CFD analyses for each off-design case.
It can be noticed that for lower mass flow rates, the
flow is subsonic and the efficiency levels are also
lower.
Figure 14 Performance variations at off design
conditions
The exit Mach number levels of a turbine stage
depend on the stage pressure ratio and the size of the
throat area. At high stage pressure ratios of more than
2.34, both the cascades are choked and again the
efficiency drops. The choking process and its
influence on the efficiency of the turbine stage can be
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realised when mass flow rate becomes constant for
further change in back pressure as shown in Figure
14 by a highlighted block.
This study shows the importance of a careful
control of the airfoil loss characteristic as well as the
vane and blade area matching.
VI. Mechanical Analysis
The airworthiness requirement of any component
in an engine design process necessitates that the
component be durable and safe even under off-design
conditions. Hence, it is required to meet this
objective while increasing the shaft power to weight
ratio. The structural design phase plays an important
role in the design of an engine.
The steps involved in the mechanical analysis were
modelling, discretisation, imposing boundary
conditions, performing DOE analysis to find the
minimum web thickness of the blisk and optimising
for weight. Since the blisk model was generated in
the detail design phase, it was imported to ANSYS
Workbench 11.0 for auto meshing using combined
tetra and hexahedral elements. A mesh independent
study was performed to fix the number of elements.
Figure 15 shows the meshed model of the rotor blisk.
Figure 15 Meshing of Rotor Blisk
Since the turbine blisk is a complex system,
rotating at very high speed of 52000 rpm, it
experiences a number of major loads like centrifugal
load, gas load and thermal load. As a consequence,
the rotor is subjected to hoop and radial stresses.
The influence of the radial stress in the rotors is to
burst the web of the disc at high speeds where as the
hoop stress leads to crack initiation and propagation
at the hub. Hence, both of these loads are harmful for
the turbine, necessitating utmost care in the
mechanical design of the turbine rotor.
In order to simulate the realistic conditions, a
cylindrical joint boundary condition was imposed on
the blisk and the working environment was set to The morphed model was then optimised to
950° C. Aditionally, the gas loads on the blade were minimize the disc weight and still keeping the stress
imposed. levels within the yield limit of the material at an
operating temperature of 1200 K. There were only
From manufacturing point of view also, the process
two main variables for disk weight optimisation , viz.
should not become too complex. Keeping in view
web thickness and hub radius at the shaft.
various constraints, it is just not possible to increase
or decrease the thickness of discs as desired. It is,
therefore, required to find a minimum thickness of
bladed disc that overcomes mechanical limitations as
well as results in saving the weight of the component.
The component weights in the airborne engines have
high significance because saving the weight on each
individual component can save overall weight of the
aircraft, and hence overall programme cost.
A parametric study was taken up to find the
minimum thickness of the web. It involved a number
of manual iterations. The parameters considered for
Figure 17 Shape morphing to generate blisk of
the design were ‘t1’, the thickness of the web; ‘t2’ the
uniform strength
thickness of the blade land; and ‘t3’ the thickness of
the shaft hub; as shown in Figure 16. A few initial The optimisation process involved a technique
iterations were tried with ‘t1’ = 7.5 mm, 8 mm and called Design of Experiments (DOE). As a starting
8.5 mm based on experience. These designs were not design point, the optimizer was deliberately given a
considered as they showed a high level of stress, design band of variation for each input parameters
which was not acceptable as a solution. that generated a diverse solution for the disc.

Figure 16 Parameters considered for DOE

A thickness of 10 mm seemed to be the safe
solution in terms of stress levels but still there was
scope for some optimization to arrive at a minimum
thickness. Finally, a minimum thickness at the hub
was iterated out to be 9.054 mm. The other
thicknesses ‘t2’ and ‘t3’ were finalized at 3 mm and 4
mm respectively.
Subsequently, a complete structural analysis was
performed on the blisk and it was observed that the
stress distribution over the web portion was non-
uniform. This was again a matter of concern as the
non-uniform stress distribution could lead to weaker
sections in long run. In order to overcome this
weakening effect, a blisk of uniform strength was
designed by shape morphing, as shown in Figure 17.
Figure 18 Weight optimization through DOE
Among all the feasible solutions, satisfying all of
the output constraints and objectives, the one that
yielded minimum weight for a marginal stress value
was selected to be the optimal design, as shown in
Figure 18. The solution was obtained in
approximately 6 hours on a 1GB RAM workstation.
VII. Conclusion

An axial flow turbine stage is designed for an
APU of fighter aircraft. The turbine develops a
power of 440 kW and drives a 6:1 pressure ratio
centrifugal compressor. The turbine runs at 52000
rpm.

A design space was created to obtain a design
point ‘P’ that met the expected performance

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 criteria in terms of stage reaction (45.5%) and [3] Ainley, D. G., and Mathieson, G. C. R., (1951)
efficiency (90.01%). The other features at the “A Method of Performance Estimation for
design point included an aerodynamic loading < Axial Flow Turbines”, ARC technical report,
4.0, exit swirl angle of 20°, mean blade speed < Ministry of Supply, Aeronautical Research
380 m/s and un-choked nozzles Council reports and memoranda, R & M No
2974.

A turbine design code is developed based on free
vortex theory and the output of this forms the [4] Ainley, D. G., and Mathieson, G. C. R., (1951)
basis of the blade generation. “Examination of the Flow and Pressure Losses
in Blade Rows of Axial Flow Turbine”, ARC

The results obtained from the CFD computations
technical report, Ministry of Supply,
are in good agreement with the design targets of
Aeronautical Research Council reports and
thermodynamic cycle and preliminary design. A
memoranda, R & M No 2891
mass flow rate of 1.964 kg/s is obtained as against
expected mass flow rate of 1.896 kg/s [5] Baskharone Erian, A., “Principles of Turbo
machinery in Air-Breathing Engines”,

Studies on tip clearance suggested a minimum tip
Cambridge University Press, ISBN-13 978-0-
clearance of 1%, which resulted in best
521-85810-6
performance of the turbine.
[6] Pierret, S., and Braembussche Van den, R.A.,

Studies with varying stagger angles (30° to 45°)
(1999) “Turbo machinery Blade Design using a
for the NGV suggested a stagger angle of 40° that
Navier-Stokes Solver and Artificial Neural
gave the best performance without choking.
Network”, RTO-MP-8, AC/323(AVT)TP/9,

Mechanical analysis of the blisk was carried out, ISBN 92-837-0005-8.
both at the design speed and the burst speed of
[7] Yao, J., Jameon, A., Alonso, J.J., and Liu, F.,
115% and the stress levels were found well within
(2000) “Development and Validation of a
the safe limit.
Massively Parallel Flow Solver for Turbo

Design optimization on the blisk was carried out machinery Flows”, 38th Aerospace Science
for its weight and a disc of 1.4 kg was selected as Meeting and Exhibit.
the optimal design, keeping the stress levels
within allowable limits.

Shape morphing of the blisk was performed and
the blisk of uniform strength was generated.

The results have demonstrated the utility of an
integrated approach involving preliminary design,
CFD analysis and mechanical analysis to arrive at
a satisfactory design of the turbine stage.

Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank all the members of
the Propulsion Systems, ADA and the Centre for
Rotating Machinery Design, MSRSAS, Bangalore for
their helpful suggestions.

References
[1] Spalart, P. R., and Allmaras, S.R., “A One
Equation Turbulence Model for Aerodynamic
Flows”, AIAA Paper 92-0439.
[2] Schmidt Jameson, W., and Turkel, E., (1981)
“Numerical Solution of Euler Solution by finite
volume methods with Runge-kutta time
stepping schemes”, AIAA paper 81-1259

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