Direct 3D Aerodynamic Optimization of Turbine Blades with GPU-Accelerated CFD

Secondary flow features of turbine blade flows are only assessable by 3D computational fluid dynamics (CFD) which is a time-consuming task. In this paper a fast automatic optimization process for the aerodynamic improvement of three-dimensional turbine blades is described and applied to a two-stage turbine rig. Basically, standard tools are used where the 3D CFD analysis, however, is significantly accelerated by a novel CFD solver running on graphics processing units (GPU) and the entire blade is parameterized in 3D. This approach shows that three-dimensional optimization of turbine blades is feasible within days of runtime and finds an improved blade design.