Design and Optimization of Turbomachinery
Ever-increasing environmental regulations, strict technical requirements, as well as strong competition in the market, demand a very high level of performance in current turbomachinery design, with typical goals such as increasing efficiency and durability. Modern simulation tools allow the designers a good insight into the performance measures of interest, but can be challenging and time-consuming to employ on a wider scale, especially when performing parameter studies. A proven way to overcome these challenges is automated design exploration and optimization.
Optimization and automated design exploration augment the development process by leading to better and optimized designs, shortening development times and reducing design cycles, as well as increasing the knowledge about the product’s behavior, i.e., the influence of various parameters on its performance, early in the design process, when the freedom for making decisions is largest.
Apart from the aforementioned simulation tools, two crucial components are needed to achieve the desired process automation: a driver of the optimization process with appropriate systematic variation and optimization strategies, and a suitable CAD tool that can reliably produce the different geometry variants that should be analyzed.
CAESES® is a comprehensive software solution for exploring and optimizing complex turbomachinery components. CAESES® bridges the gap between traditional CAD and simulation. It provides intelligent geometry models for robust variation of the shape, and CFD automation to conduct design explorations and optimization. In particular, the focus of CAESES® is the simulation-ready and variable CAD.
Why Would I Need an Additional CAD System?
In our experience, the primary bottleneck in setting up and running an automated design exploration or optimization process is related to the handling of geometry:
- Geometry variation with traditional CAD systems is often tedious or prone to failure, i.e., some or even many of the variants fail to regenerate when changing parameter values.
- It is difficult to consider, or even automatically fulfill, given constraints.
- The quality of the CAD model might not be suitable for simulation (e.g., w.r.t. watertightness, level of detail).
- Too many parameters make optimization inefficient.
- Not enough control is given over critical geometrical properties.
For the most part, CAESES® is a highly specialized CAD system that specifically tackles these problems. It is focused on parametric modeling and variation of complex geometries for design studies and optimization. It provides efficient parameterization methods that offer a high degree of flexibility while using less parameters, comprehensive capabilities for integrating constraints, and simulation-ready exports that require no manual processing.
Turbomachinery Design Capabilities
CAESES® comes with an extensive set of capabilities to support the design and optimization of turbomachinery components:
- Comprehensive parametric modeling of arbitrary blade and casing geometries based on fully user-defined parameterizations.
- Endwall contouring, e.g., for non-axisymmetric hubs.
- Inclusion of secondary flow structures, such as bypasses, wastegates, cooling structures, ported shrouds, etc.
- Alternatively, powerful and flexible morphing capabilities for imported geometries.
- Robust variation with little to no failed variants.
- Full consideration of constraints, e.g., due to manufacturing and packaging reasons.
- Fully-featured optimization environment with a wide selection of DoE and optimization strategies, as well as data management and post-processing capabilities.
- Analysis of imported geometries (from CAD, sectional or scan data) and automated fitting of parametric models.
- Users can implement customized preliminary design methodology.
Additionally, CAESES fully supports the integration into existing workflows:
- Import of geometry data from external preliminary design tools, processing, and/or extraction of necessary parameters.
- Generic interface to easily connect CAESES® to external solvers (typically CFD, but also structural and other disciplines).
- Automated generation and export of solid and fluid domains for downstream simulation tools.
- Geometry exports in several different formats suitable for your simulation/meshing tools, including special export formats like geomTurbo or Turbogrid.
- Inclusion and parametrization of support structures for structured meshing.
- Direct integration in ANSYS Workbench through the CAESES Workbench App.
- Full scriptability, to easily integrate CAESES® in third-party optimizers like modeFRONTIER, Optimus, optiSLang, and more.
Turbomachinery Applications
Aside from other not specifically turbomachinery-related geometries such as duct or manifolds, CAESES® covers the complete range of
modeling for applications such as
- Turbochargers
- Pumps
- Gas and steam turbines
- Aero engines
- Fans
- Hydro turbines
- Propellers
Who Uses CAESES?
Leading players in the sector, such as turbocharger, pump or gas turbine manufacturers, research organizations, and engineering consultants use CAESES® for the optimization of turbomachinery components. This includes companies like MTU, Rolls-Royce, Siemens Energy, Grundfos, Garret Motion, KSB, Cummins Turbo Technologies, MAN Energy Solutions, Atlas Copco, and Multi-Wing.
I have successfully been using CAESES for many years now. It allows me to create my own customized toolbox with everything I need in the different stages of the pump design process.
The functionality of CAESES greatly accelerated and complemented our traditional design process. Finally, it lets us improve the quality of our various types of pumps.
Dr. Toni Klemm
CFD Engineer
By using CAESES®, we could massively bring down our turbine design cycle from several months to only a few weeks.
Nicolas Lachenmaier
Engineer for Fluid Dynamics and Thermal Analysis
We launched a pilot project with FRIENDSHIP SYSTEMS to evaluate CAESES in May, it helped us solve a time-critical task in July and it became a design tool by October.
By then, we had created flexible and robust parametric models for complex parts, enabling us to optimize in design spaces we had previously not been able to explore.
Tilman auf dem Kampe
Head of Aerodynamics Technology Development
Large Gas Turbine Engineering
I enjoy using CAESES, as it allows me to parametrically generate geometries without ever going through a CAD design cycle.
In this sense, it really streamlined my process from concept to CFD verification.
Ruhou Gao
Turbomachinery Engineer
Case Studies and Blog Posts for Turbomachinery Applications
Questions?
Please do not hesitate to get in touch with us if you have questions in the context of your specific application. We look forward to discussing it together with you!