A Blade Altering Toolbox for Automating Rotor Design Optimization

Abstract

The Blade Altering Toolbox (BAT) described in this paper is a tool designed for fast reconstruction of an altered blade geometry for design optimization purposes. The BAT algorithm is capable of twisting a given rotor’s angle of attack and stretching the chord length along the span of the rotor. Several test cases were run using the BAT’s algorithm. The BAT code’s twisting, stretching, and mesh reconstruction capabilities proved to be able to handle reasonably large geometric alterations to a provided input rotor geometry. The test examples showed that the toolbox’s algorithm could handle any stretching of the blade’s chord as long as the blade remained within the original bounds of the unaltered mesh. The algorithm appears to fail when the net twist angle applied the geometry exceeds approximately 30 degrees, however this limitation is dependent on the initial geometry and other input parameters. Overall, the algorithm is a very powerful tool for automating a design optimization procedure.