Aerodynamic Optimization Design for All Condition of Centrifugal Compressor

This paper describes an application of centrifugal compressor optimization system, in which the blade profile of impeller is represented with NURBS(Non-Uniform Rational B-Spline) curve. A commercial CFD(Computational Fluid Dynamics) program named NUMECA fine/turbo was used to evaluate the performance of the whole centrifugal compressor flow passage including impeller and diffuser. The whole optimization design system was integrated based on iSIGHT, a commercial integration and optimization software, which provides a direct application of some optimization algorithms. To insure the practicability of optimization, the performance of centrifugal compressor under all condition was concerned during the optimizing process. That means a compositive object function considering the aerodynamic efficiency, pressure ratio and mass flow rate under different work condition was applied by using different weight number for different conditions. Using the optimization method described in this paper, an optimized design of the impeller blade of centrifugal compressor was obtained. Comparing to the original design, optimized design has a better performance not only under the design work condition, but also the off-design work condition including near stall and near choke condition.