A Database of Optimal Airfoils for Axial Compressor Throughflow Design

Airfoil shapes tailored to specific inflow conditions and loading requirements can offer a significant performance potential over classic airfoil shapes. However, their optimal operating range has to be matched thoroughly to the overall compressor layout. This paper describes methods to organize a large set of optimized airfoils in a database and its application in the throughflow design. Optimized airfoils are structured in five dimensions: inlet Mach number, blade stagger angle, pitch–chord ratio, maximum thickness–chord ratio, and a parameter for aerodynamic loading. In this space, a high number of airfoil geometries are generated by means of numerical optimization. During the optimization of each airfoil, the performance at design and off-design conditions is evaluated with the blade-to-blade flow solver MISES. Together with the airfoil geometry, the database stores automatically calibrated correlations which describe the cascade performance in throughflow calculation. Based on these methods, two subsonic stages of a 4.5-stage transonic research compressor are redesigned. Performance of the baseline and updated geometry is evaluated with 3D CFD. The overall approach offers accurate throughflow design incorporating optimized airfoil shapes and a fast transition from throughflow to 3D CFD design.